


In the shadow of your love

by my_thestral



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-05
Updated: 2015-08-02
Packaged: 2018-01-14 15:36:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 59
Words: 323,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1271950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/my_thestral/pseuds/my_thestral
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ron Weasley's life is perfect. Well, just about. It's on its way to perfection, anyway. But Ron does not do perfect. Draco Malfoy won't let him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Malfoys

**Author's Note:**

> It's done... finally, and now I can breathe. *exhales* I had a part written before I even started posting bits of it and by the time I had to update fresh chapters, I was a different person, who wanted a different ending and this fic *really* did a number on me. But as I've said before, I'm not a quitter and even though it took me more than two years to finish it - finish it I did, and with no small thanks to all the readers, who bothered to comment. I will say no more, this story is longer than Pluto's trip around the sun already. I hope some of you can enjoy, but there's no hard feelings if you quit half way up - it really is obnoxiously long. :)  
> Warnings: This story is not canon with the ending of the original work.  
> Totally unbetaed, so brace yourself for a ride through all the tar-pits of my shaky vocabulary.  
> I was also advised recently to add a trigger warning for anyone who might have had experience with intense emotional attachment - I didn't realize this was an issue, so I apologize if anyone got hurt.  
> And, of course, a disclaimer, I almost forgot, bless the stupid Swiss cheese I have for a head these days: characters aren't mine and no profit is being made

_“And as the light in you went dark_

_I saw you turn to shadow…”_

Broken pieces, Apocalyptica

 

»I want an heir!« repeated Lucius Malfoy, his cold steely glare set on a slight figure of his only son, disappearing in the waning light of day.

The young man by the window never moved in the slightest as if the words, once more echoing across the large dining hall, swept right by him. One of the thin arms went up for the briefest of moments just to fix a blond lock of hair that managed to escape from his long plait far enough to distract his sight - and then Draco Malfoy was once again still as a marble statue, his grey eyes, so alike his father’s, fixed onto a display of evening shadows and yielding light playing in the beautiful gardens of the Malfoy Manor. The look in his eyes was distant as if his mind was focused on an entirely different vision, but as he was turned towards the window, his father could not have registered, how little of his son’s wandering thoughts he managed to captivate.

Narcissa Malfoy shifted uncomfortably in her high chair and tried to soften the sudden chilly air of discomfort that swept across the room at the harsh sound of her husband’s words:

“Surely we do not have to discuss this now, in the middle of such a pleasant dinner…” she began, but once more her beautiful strong husband could not be swayed.

“What better time than now!” he barked sharply, his unrelenting grey eyes still dead set at the immobile figure carved out of silence that seemed to glow in out-of-this-world beauty in the last rays of the autumn son.

“You have been avoiding the subject for weeks, no, _months_ now, and I will have no more of it!” his voice of cold anger shred through the elegant décor of the room. He pushed away his plate hastily and rose from behind the table with energy of a much younger man. If it was not for his gait, slightly stiff, there would hardly be any trace of the ordeal he’s been put through a couple of years back during his less than pleasant stay in the wizarding prison of Azkaban that included some first-hand encounters with vengeful Aurors and ill-disposed Dementors. He was, after all, a very resilient wizard and a survivor of the old kind.

Leaning heavily on his walking stick, elaborately ornamented, not the least with a purpose of hiding his wand, Lucius made a few adamant steps towards his son, still frozen at the window. His voice softened just a tiny bit when he touched his son’s shoulder and let his palm rest upon it.

“Surely it is not unreasonable for a father to expect his healthy young son to procreate at the prim of his youth? What other young man has a world at his feet at the age of twenty-one, as you do? I mean, just look at you – “ he squeezed his shoulder with a touch of impatience and turned his son to face him.

“Just look at you!” he repeated, pride and satisfaction gleaming in his voice. “You’re as handsome as a man can be, you’ve got all my money to dispose of, you’re well bred and cultivated and most of all…” a spark of old folly shimmered in his eyes at these words “… most of all, you’re of _pure blood_ , a descendant of ancient houses of Malfoy and Black, there’s none like you out there!” he finished with a vigour as if his voice alone could make this stubborn child he still saw in front of him, yield to his will as it once had, no doubts no questions asked.

But the war had taken that boy away and replaced him with this stranger with the wondrously gleaming eyes that shone like moonlight, so alike him that there could be no question of his heritage and yet so foreign that he couldn’t help but wonder if there ever really was such a boy, such a time, when his son would follow and answer to him alone. It all seemed so distant now…

Stubbornly, Draco still refused to look at him as his eyes continued to linger somewhere to the side of him as if the intricate patterns of the plush carpet captured his imagination and spun him into a reverie.

Desperate to shake him out of his stupor and wake up the human inside of him, Lucius clutched his fingers at his shoulder, shaking him ever so slightly and pursued with desperate anger:

“Pure blood, passed from me to you through centuries, for generations and it all amounts to nothing, if you’re not to have children of your own! As if it’s not enough that our ranks are over flown by half-bloods and worse – “ his mouth squirmed at the sickening thought – “the mudbloods, but even pure-blooded wizards seem to be doing their darndest to see the end of our kind! I mean, just look at that abominable Weasley!” he ground his teeth at the thought of his much-hated peer, who always did his best to get on his bad side.

But strange as it was, his words seemed to have stirred something inside his son, for his head shot up unexpectedly with alertness he could not fathom a reason for and Draco asked with a voice sounding hoarse and almost hungry: “What about Wea... the lot of them?”

Completely in the dark as to what could have possibly shook  his son to full attention, but ready to ride the wind of his interest, Lucius continued self-contently:

“Arthur has been driving everyone absolutely raving mad with his daily reports on the ever-increasing number of his grand-children and “the achievements” of the lot! He is actually proud of it, mind you! His oldest is all but a werewolf, married to a veela with god-knows-what resulting as an offspring, his daughter Ginevra is just about to have her first with that despicable half-blood Potter!” he spat the name with bile and concluded positively seething with rage: “And to top it all: your own peer, that Ronald you went to Hogwarts to – that one has three children in just as many years, with a mudblood! And with no end in sight, either! Arthur is boasting to every unfortunate soul who lacks the wisdom to escape that they want more, they’re just taking a break, because the last were twins, apparently a high-maintenance pair at that! Imagine that! Worse than rabbits! Such a waste of pure blood!”

His son who turned pearly white during his speech somehow managed to gain back his composure and finally replied in a cold quiet voice:

“But I already know that, father! Ever since _you_ insisted that I go back to Hogwarts to complete my education, my Defence against the dark arts lectures have been given by the mighty Potter himself. Apparently he’s filling in for his wife, whose condition – they say her due date is near – does not allow her to teach spells against hexes, the magic of pregnant women being unpredictable, or something of the kind... You would have known that should you ever have _bothered_ to inquire about my education,” he glared coldly, making Lucius shift uncomfortably with a sense of guilt.

“As you would have known that once again this year I’ve been sharing the classes with Ron Weasley. The word is, he’s been so occupied with taking care of his growing family while his mudblood wife pursues her career - that he didn’t manage to take up his N.E.W.T.s until now, almost three years after ... you know what... “ his voice trailed off, still uncomfortable on the topic of war, since it was due to his father’s ambition and interest in Dark Magic that they found themselves on the wrong side of it. 

Not that he was sorry to have lost; Merlin only knows he was still losing sleep over the screams of those he was forced to torture and all the creepy corpses piled up, staring at him with dead accusing eyes... Suddenly tired of this conversation and eager to get away, he delivered his final blow in a bored Malfoy style:

“And since you have yourself determined that it would not do to breed like rabbits, I don’t believe we have much more to discuss at this point. For Merlin’s sake, give it a rest, I implore you...”

But having soon discerned from his father’s heated face that he did not consider this to be the end of conversation, Draco’s cheeks finally flushed with anger and he added haughtily:

“My time will come and I will most certainly not marry and reproduce just to please you, gods know I have done enough of _that_ to last me a lifetime and a lot of good I’ve got to show for it!”

Violently pulling up the sleeve of his expensive shirt to show the dark mark on his arm, as clear as the first day he was forced to take it, Draco saw his father go pale. With no small satisfaction he managed a thought “Touché, father?”, before he felt a sudden surge of shame and stormed past dumbstruck Lucius in long strides. His departure left his stunned parents to the long moments of uncomfortable silence.

“I told you he should have gone to Durmstrang!” finally exploded Lucius, glaring angrily at his worried wife, who was obviously going to be a vent for his frustration. “Honestly, Potter, a teacher, of all people! And his awful Weasley-born wife as a Professor at Hogwarts – what was Minerva thinking, engaging her!? Next thing you know there will be embryos running the damn place! The Ministry must immediately be informed of these crumpling standards! At Durmstrang, at least...”

“I will hear nothing more of the Durmstrang!” his wife finally cut him short in a cold high voice. “I have lost Draco once, I do not plan to spend another day wondering where he might be or what those brutes might be doing to him in that inhospitable excuse for a school! All the hard discipline and the cold... You see how fragile he’s become! At least this way he comes home to us every evening,” her voice softened and she moved closer to put a palm on her husband’s shoulder.

“We know he’s safe and whatever he learns in there... well, he’s not going to have to work for his living and his education will be primarily left to himself and his interests. And if the standards there are low – well... “ she shrugged “The lower they are, the easier he will excel in his N.E.W.T.s! After all, he is right – you did want him to go back only to obtain the official education... And he’ll come around, you’ll see... he is still so very young, I’m not sure I’m willing to lose him to another woman just yet...”

As she saw the angry reply forming on her husband’s stormy face, she lift her eyebrows mockingly and laughed in a ringing voice he loved so much:

“Now, now, dear... since when has a Malfoy ever been blind to a bit of healthy taunting?! I will go and talk to him right now, see if there’s anything that’s been bothering him... I’m sure there’s nothing he cannot talk to his mother about. And when his spirit has improved, maybe we’ll throw him one of those wonderful balls where he can meet plenty of eligible young girls - I assure you I will hand pick them to make sure to invite only the attractive ones with s spotless pedigree that meets our approval – and one of them is bound to catch his eye!”

Visibly relieved by his wife’s words, Lucius managed a smile and took a hold of her fragile palm, still resting on his shoulder, kissing it with devotion he only ever felt for his small family:

“As always, you are right, my lady... Go find him, my love, talk to him, work your magic, anything to bring him to his senses... Merlin, do I wish to see life in those eyes of his, Narcissa,” he sighed, only now fully revealing how very much under stress he’s put himself under over his son’s detached demeanour and the distance he has put between them.

“As do I, darling... as do I,” murmured his wife, putting a gentle kiss on his worry-creased brow and hurried out of the room to catch up with her son.


	2. Narcissa the Magnificent

_“Hallowed be thy name…”_

Iron Maiden

 

Narcissa always felt that love was sacred. That was her one little secret, the one she would never share with her haughty sister Bellatrix, the one that would make her silently approve of her other sister’s choice of a Muggle-born husband though she knew she could never openly express her support to Andromeda.

She understood and valued the power of love as she would never dare to reveal to any of the companions her dark-magic-crazed husband kept around. After all, it was love for her son, lost somewhere in the midst of war, that brought her family over to the right side of war after she had betrayed the Dark Lord on impulse and proclaimed Harry Potter to be dead, even though she could unmistakably feel the pulse in his chest.

One could say that she loved Lucius before she even met him, for her first romantic feeling towards him were formed upon the favourable accounts of the young and reportedly handsome heir of the esteemed family her sister Bellatrix has given her. And she decidedly fell in love with him when she first set eyes on a tall blond beau as an 11-year-old.

Everything she has done since then to the day they were married was just a means to an end. First, she had to persuade that tattered Sorting Hat to put her in Slytherin, since she was well aware that Lucius would not spare her _another glance_ if she ended up in any of the other Houses. She knew she was not as cruel and merciless as Bella and sure enough, the hat has taken his time with her. But finally, and much to the relief of all the Blacks , she was proclaimed to join “ _Slytherin_!” and smiling like an angel she went to take her place next to the haughty looking blond beau that she’s marked for herself. When Lucius, a year her senior, stepped for a second from what seemed his high place in Heaven to pass her a hand and help her take a seat on the bench, she smiled at him gracefully with her adoring eyes and that was all it took – as Lucius told her years later, when they were already married – he was lost.

She knew she would always follow him, always be by his side, learning to be strong and powerful, even if it was in all the wrong kinds of magic, just to make him smile at her with approval and admiration; to show him her devotion, to show him how high-above and beautiful and – well – _right_ she found everything about him. While she was not short of suitors – after all, she was of pure blood, from a powerful and rich wizarding family and above all – beautiful like a clear winter day – she never for a moment waivered in her romantic pursuit: she was to be his queen and he will crown her with his love.

But the more time she spent with Lucius, she began to discover that he knew nothing of love. His family and their ways of upbringing did not encourage love and if he had any in himself when he was a child it was surely not allowed to breathe. By the time Narcissa met her future husband, he was all style, good breeding, dead-set ambition and a lot of cold calculation as to who to uphold and who to discard. Lucius kept no one close that he had no use for. Even that horrible boy Severus, a half-blood, unattractive and poor; he was a potion-master extraordinaire even when he was still but a child and as such, extremely useful.

So she knew that in order to claim Lucius, he needed to see her as a necessity, be it as an admired decor to his small company of haughty and often bored pure-bloods, or a smart witch, well skilled in the art of spells and hexes that could only be whispered about in secret; and in the end, as an appropriate match, satisfactory to both proud families.

But she was determined to be all that and more. She would make Lucius Malfoy love her or she would never be his. She would not foster an idea of a love potion for everyone knew they had no lasting effect nor did she bother pretending to be stupid, like some other girls did, to make the object of their affection feel more powerful – why on Merlin’s Earth would a Malfoy want a stupid wife?! Instead, she would challenge him, impress him, feign innocence and lead him on just to put a hold on more carnal of his desires, until she had him wrapped around her little finger, until she has bewitched him to the point of never looking at another woman with desire and yes, finally, love. And yet, when her schooling approached the end, she was a nervous wreck. Lucius had been a year older, this was his last year and if she doesn’t tie him to herself with bonds strong enough, who knows where life out of Hogwarts might take him?

She cried the whole night after he had taken the last of his N.E.W.T.s, knowing that she might never see him again. But she should not have worried. The second she set foot in her home at the Black Manor, she was welcomed by a very-pleased looking _maman_ , who informed her, that a certain young man from a very grand family announced himself for a private audience with her father, to discuss a possibility of bonding the families. She could not lure it out of maman, who that young man might be, and she thought she would just die until the next day... but then a certain house elf, who took pity on her nervous state of affairs, let it slip that the visitor had long blond hair – and suddenly she knew that her fate was secured.

Lucius Malfoy had indeed come by to ask for her hand in marriage, but since she was not yet of age, they agreed upon betrothal rather than sudden marriage.

For Narcissa this was the longest year of her life and yet the shortest one: after all, planning the grandest marriage of their time and attending school to pass the N.E.W.T.s has taken all her time and all of her abilities. But she was determined that she would have it all and when she walked, proud and tall in her breathtaking wedding dress towards her dashing husband-to-be she knew it was all worth it.

And though she thought she knew love in the years to come, she realized she knew nothing of the kind, until her son was born.  When after long hours in labour she first took the tiny body in her arms, she was so overwhelmed with fierce emotion of protectiveness, tenderness, awe and affection that she stopped breathing and couldn’t find words for her feelings. She looked at Lucius, pale as a parchment and positively trembling, and couldn’t find anything to express her love for him better than to present him with that most precious of all gifts. He took their tiny son from her carefully as if he was the most delicate of treasures, looked into a small wrinkled face and when the baby looked at him with wonder of a newborn, Lucius Malfoy, master of Dark Arts, absolutely _glowed_ in love and happiness.

“He’s got my eyes!” he whispered in disbelief in she knew then as she knew now that love truly was sacred.

A lifetime of explorations of the darkest spells have never robbed her of that persuasion, to her those were merely games to satisfy her curiosity, all the dark artefacts kept around the Manor just toys for her husband interests – never would she think for a minute to lay it all on a line when it came to saving those she truly loved. And when the time came, that was just what she did. She put her life on the line when she lied for Potter, knowing that it might get her and Lucius killed if she chose the wrong side, but she could see no point in having a life without her beautiful boy. She needed to find Draco, to protect him from everything Lucius has so foolishly dragged them in – she had her part in it, so she never really held it against him – and to make sure he had a future. If that would mean giving her life, so be it. She never did tell anyone that all those years ago the Sorting Hat considered putting her in Gryffindor.

And after all the trouble she’s put them through, she got her beloved son back. She found him in the midst of the ruins that were once Hogwarts, frightened, injured, but alive and she vowed never to let him go again. Her jest that she was not willing to give him up for the sake of another woman, was only half-hearted, she’s meant a good deal of it! And now her Draco, the moon and the stars of her existence, was hurting, and she will have none of that.

She knocked at his door resolutely, determined to find out what it was that was bothering her. If her intuition was right, he was well on a road to full recovery – only a couple of months back she saw a genuine smile light up his face for the first time after that blasted war, when they’ve presented him with a top-of-the-line broom for his birthday – and then Lucius has got it into his stubborn head that his son must have a formal education and it has all spiralled downwards from there.

She pretended she heard a soft “come in” – she might have or she might have not – and she entered Draco’s childhood bedroom, full of memorabilia of happier years that miraculously made it through the war unharmed.

Draco was standing by the window, barely discernible in the dusk and Narcissa’s heart tightened in her chest in a mixture of worry and love. She approached him from behind and went to stand at his side, so she could steal a glimpse of his face.

“Whatever is the matter with you, my dear?” she asked with a small sigh and tenderness in her voice, only reserved for her baby. “Your father is right, you have been acting ... off lately and I do wish you could talk to me about it...” she implored pleadingly.

When there was no response, she went on to proclaim her devotion with yet more clarity.

“You do know you can talk to me about anything, love?” she stated fiercely, gently turning his face towards herself with a finger under his chin and looked directly into his eyes. “If there is anything, _anything_ at all you wish to tell me, your father would never have to know...” she offered invitingly. “You know all your secrets were always safe with me,” she smiled angelically, reminding him of many-a-time when she kept him safe from her husband’s temper.

Her heart leaped when she saw a flicker of gratefulness in his eyes, but a small smile he offered was so sad that she was suddenly over-flooded with anxiety. He couldn’t be ill, could he? All those curses and hexes flying around and he was right in the middle of it... She felt physically sick at the thought and he must have noticed something, because his hand went out to hold hers and he said in a voice, meant to be calming:

“I will be fine mother, honestly. It’s just this season... it seems to make me a tad depressed. I shall go out and get some fresh air and I’ll be restored to my charming self shortly,” he added with an obvious attempt at jolly, but the playfulness never really reached his eyes. He patted her hand affectionately, then pushed past her rather unceremoniously and disappeared through the door.

She stood there, rooted to the floor, too shocked to react when he has so expertly dodged her gentle probing, but her mind was anything but frozen. Narcissa Malfoy performed best when under pressure and right now her astute mind was working like a freight train.

He was _lying_. Every ounce of her motherly instinct was telling her that and she feared immensely what it could have been that made him lie to his own mother. Surely he knew she would move the moon and the stars to accommodate him and yet he was reluctant to confide in her. She decided that this was one secret she had no intention of letting go by – it was clearly making her precious son miserable and she will find out by any means possible, what it was that wouldn’t let him breathe.

Purpose sanctifies the means, she decided, or in her case – love does. Draco might have been able to repel a head-on attack by his father, but he never stood a chance against his mother. Even the Dark Lord himself had learnt that lesson the hard way.


	3. Draco, on edge

_“Like a moth I’m drawn into your flame…”_

Not strong enough, Apocalyptica

 

Draco was mortified. He field physically sick having had to lie to his own mother, which he often felt was his only true ally in this new times. He knew she would initially be upset, but she would eventually come to understand... it was not as if he could not trust her.... it was just...

If he came out to her, if he would have to say it out aloud, he would have to acknowledge it, this feeling, this obsession he didn’t want to think about, he didn’t want to own up to. As long as he kept it confined deep inside his soul, safely hidden under his denial, it would not be real, it would one day come to pass. Just that... he could see no end to it now.

It was eating him up alive, crushing his heart, squeezing his breath short and stealing time, sometimes long hours lost, before he realized he has not thought of anything else. It was keeping him awake at night, had him thinking himself up to a boiling point, where he would break into powerless sobbing, clenching fists as if he could drag it out in the open and pound into it, until it died and left him empty.

At times like this he wished with all his heart he could be free of this passion, this unrequited love that consumed him... and yet he could not imagine anymore how his life would have been like without ever waking up to the memory of ... _that_ , those blissful moments that made it all worth a while and were now gone for good.

As he hurried down the hall towards the dusk-veiled garden, hot tears of anger, despair and sudden determination caught him off-guard. He had hurt his mother, the one person that loved him unconditionally and somehow he acutely became aware that he has to put an end to it. He was a Malfoy after all, for Merlin’s sake, they didn’t die of love! Except that he felt like he was going to... and it couldn’t end like this, not for him... not for that abominable undeserving creature his stupid _stupid_ heart has chosen to cling on so determinately.

He had to resolve it somehow, he had to do it now; before he crippled himself emotionally and hurt more people... he had to go.

A set of fireworks that suddenly exploded over the horizons startled him, forcefully bringing forth never quite forgotten memories of Voldemort’s display of presence in the clouds and he shivered. But it also triggered another thought...

They are going to be in the public park, the whole lot of them, he heard holy Potter talking about it – it was some Muggle holiday with bonfire and the fire-crackers and the whole circus – he is bound to go unnoticed in the crowd. He just needed a word, a closure, something that will help him break the chains of this crazy impossible infatuation. Maybe he _could_ get his resolve after all. Yes, it was time to go indeed.

From the window of her room, just above her son, Narcissa Malfoy , saw the same fireworks set off, barely stopping herself from wincing. But as she saw the light of the fireworks reflect in Draco’s eyes along with the recognition of some thought and finally resolve, it was all she needed. When he disapparated, she knew where to follow him.


	4. Ron: Ghost of the past

_“You know I’d love to love you_

_And above you there’s no other…”_

Living in a past, Jethro Tull

 

**Two months earlier...**

Ron stretched his long body like a big ginger cat on a lawn in front of the massive construction site in progress that was Hogwarts these days. He happily pushed his freckled face up, towards the late summer sun, and exhaled in pure pleasure. Gods, he forgot how lovely it was out here, just resting lazily, allowing himself to be caressed by the sun-rays of what seemed as the beginning of a long Indian summer.  It felt absolutely fabulous that for once he had nothing better to do than just rest and wait to be summoned for his classes to begin...

He almost laughed out loud with a sudden thought - who would have believed that!? Ronald Weasley of all people, anxious to pick up his schooling where he’s left it three years ago in search of Horcruxes! He smiled to himself, knowing that no one really took him for much of a brain trust, since his efforts at school work were less than exemplary. But his friends knew that he was brilliant in his own practical way that had less to do with the academic knowledge and everything to do with putting this knowledge to use in the real world out there.

The truth was, he wasn’t dead anxious to be buried in books up to his eyebrows again, but Merlin, did he _ever_ want to come back to this place! It didn’t hit him until he got here, but some of the happiest memories of his life sprung from here; it was like every stone told another story of Ron Weasley’s life.

Like kissing Hermione of the first time... oh, sweet Godric, what a mess it was, what a mess _he_ was! And yet she saw past it and kissed him right back. That was how she was, simply wonderful. He felt absolved, loved, appreciated. All the feelings he was willing to trade his soul and his life for at the time. He still felt a small tingling of sensation, remembering the passion of those days.

Or there, by the lake, where he woke up from his slumber, just to find out that it was him, the insignificant Ron Weasley, that Harry Potter, the Saviour of the Wizarding world, missed the most. There were really no words to describe how Harry’s choice made him feel. All he knew was, that he was over-flooded with pride and gratitude and that special warmth he would only ever associate with Harry, carefully sealing the emotion in the deepest chamber of his heart.

It certainly helped him get over Malfoy’s taunting, finally giving him the upper hand in many of their verbal combats. Harry’s choice made him feel like he had what Malfoy desperately wanted and never could get and the memory of their encounter still made him smirk. The pale youth had cornered him in a solitary hallway on his way from the Gryffindor tower the day after the second task. Stepping out from the background of his gorillas, Malfoy motioned them to stand back, clearly confident that he can deal with a solitary Weasel all by himself.

With a head slightly tilted back as if he was taking his measure, his grey eyes set directly at him, the blond menace asked disdainfully: “So, Weasley... have you thanked your boyfriend properly for saving you?”

“Bugger off, Malfoy, before I hurt you!” Ron said with a warning growl in his voice. Frankly, he didn’t really feel like throwing himself into a fight, he was so elated from the events of the day before that he was willing to be gracious towards his nemesis this once. 

But the stupid git was determined to get a reaction out of him. Confident that his cronies had his back, he had no intention of backing off: “Oh, come on, give it up, Weasel! Surely you had to think of _something_ to thank Potty for getting your lame undeserving arse from mortal peril... especially after you abandoned him so spectacularly before the First task...”

Ron’s eyes sparkled and Malfoy knew he hit the spot, so he continued with glee:  “I wonder... not a sickle to spare to treat your champion a butterbeer, late from the dorm… the only thing that comes to mind, really… is that you decided to pay your lover-boy with... _other services_... “

By that time Malfoy’s little gang was already rolling on the floor with laughter and Malfoy’s confident smirk spread across his face, setting a glow of menace to his patrician features.

Ron pulled himself up to his full impressive height, every muscle in his body tense and on a verge of going berserk, but when he grabbed the blond youth by his silken green tie, he saw a spark of uncertainty that suddenly changed the direction of his actions. Just a moment ago, he was ready to punch the lights out of the arrogant coward, but when he looked closely into those grey eyes, there was... envy... and weirdly enough... a hint of genuine pain, carefully masked under contempt.

So he wrapped the green Slytherin tie around his fist, pulling the blond closer, his voice just above the whisper: “What is it, Malfoy... jealous much?” He saw his eyes grow wider in surprise and he knew he had to ride the moment when Malfoy’s precious eloquence left him. “I bet you are... I bet you are _dying_ to have someone hold you so dear to sink in the depths of the lake for you and pull you out... I bet you insides are _screaming_ to have someone just yours, someone to make you feel special and warm and alive on the inside... it’s the way Harry makes me feel, without _ever_ even touching me.” He saw the hurt turn to rage in those grey eyes – as cold as Lucius Malfoy was, his son was always curiously passionate – so Ron knew, he had precious little time left before he would set his dogs at him.

“And as to thanking him... I’m still working on that...let’s see, maybe you can help me with that...” Without a warning he pulled him closer and captured his pale lips with his soft warm mouth, taking him so off-guard that before he knew it, Draco Malfoy was kissing him full on. He did it on impulse, but Malfoy’s mouth was unexpectedly soft and fresh and when their tongues brushed accidentally, almost innocently, the fingers of heat licked down his body and Ron knew he was not the only one who felt it, when the boy in his arms  shivered and his knees buckled…

He became aware of yelps of anger from Malfoy’s buddies and the redhead knew it wouldn’t do to let it last – not that he would want it to, god forbid, right? - but Malfoy’s unexpected cooperation gave his little revenge more pleasure than he could have imagined and it was becoming hard to let go...

When the blood in his veins began pulsating, he found himself hazily wondering how on Earth can such foul mouth deliver such sweet kisses – and then his sense of self-preservation kicked in and he finally pulled free from Malfoy’s mouth, leaving him breathless with a bewildered look in his eyes. Somewhat breathless himself Ron let go of his tie, a small smile playing on his full lips and asked with an arched eyebrow:

“So... what do you think of my present, Malfoy? Will it do? It seems to do the work for you and – in your words - Malfoys are only used to the best....” One more time looking deep into the grey orbs of the clearly distracted youth, he found nothing but complete chaos, so he chuckled softly and slipped past him, before his minions could get his hands on him.

He was almost by the stairs when Malfoy finally found his voice and it was ragged and angry and clearly indicating the dishevelled state of his owner’s mind: “You bloody poof, Weasley... you’ll pay for that... as stupid as Potter is, I can’t imagine what he sees in you! You’ve got nothing, you are nothing...!”

Ron took the time to turn around, with his escape route clear in front of him: “And yet he chose me, not you... what does that make _you_ , Malfoy? That’s right, less than nothing. Wish I didn’t have to waste _my_ first kiss on _that_ lesson, you git!”

And he practically jumped down the staircase, taking three stairs at the time to the sweet background music of Malfoy’s screams, belatedly setting his trolls after him. He was still smiling to himself when he came into the Potions’ class, immediately earning his house a deduction of 10 points “ _for being late on behalf of some mischief or the another_ ” as his “favorite” Professor Snape put it. But nothing could wipe the smile of Ron’s face that day. Harry had chosen him, had saved him, him of all people... and Malfoy was rolling in disgrace. Was there a better day? Was there a better life? Nope, not for a 14-year old Ronald Weasley.

Still after all these years it brought a smile to his face along with a curious thought why on Merlin’s bloody earth Malfoy never bothered to brand him as a “poof” in front of the entire Hogwarts. He never really thought of that, fully expecting that by the evening everybody would have known that he forced himself onto another boy. But with all the people present, not a word ever came out; Ron didn’t even have to explain it to Harry, it was as if nothing had happened. And that, given how much Malfoy hated him, was ... weird, to say the least.

He shrugged, banishing the thoughts of Malfoy from his mind and continued to watch the great big stones being levitated in the air by the team of wizards and witches under a careful supervision of Headmistress McGonagall.

And suddenly it hit him, surprisingly painful after all this time, that the school site also held some of the worst memories of his life. Like that of Fred’s lifeless body being pulled from under the debris and the screams of a suddenly very lost and very lonely George. He swallowed a lump in his throat and chose not to think about this on such a lovely day.


	5. Ron: Love adrift

This was his year after all! Not that these past three years were bad, not at all! Ron loved his life, he loved everything about it. He still loved his wife, who was also one of his best friends, though their affection flew with a deep and steady course these days, rather than with the flamboyant flame of the first months into their relationship. And he simply adored his children, little red-headed scoundrels that made his life a complete chaos worth living for.

First (and secretly his favourite) was his calm and strong Rose that looked like a small copy of Hermione with variation of his startling blue eyes. As soon as she began to speak it was obvious she also inherited the sharp intellect of her mother, often referred to as the smartest witch of the generation. And then there were the twins, of course. As much as they made him sigh and pull his hair out by the roots, he knew he would have not given up the little menaces for the world. Though they were twins, they were not identical, each a little universe of his own. Little Freddie with notoriously mischievous character and Hermione’s brown eyes almost spookily reminded Ron of his late brother Fred and was consequently worshipped by George, Fred’s surviving twin, while little Hugo was a small carbon copy of Ron and as such scandalously spoilt by Harry, who was in love with the little man to the point of teasing.

And though looking back he couldn’t have thought of a single thing he would consciously want to change, he couldn’t help but relishing the feeling of freedom he found on the lawn of Hogwarts. This was after all so different than the last three years of his life and he had truly thought he had given it up for good.

In the heat of their victory over the Voldemort, they didn’t care to stop and consider what a course their lives could take once the shadow was gone and all. Hermione, only now showing the full scale of her affection for him, was determined to make up for their lost time and Ron, well, he was just full of hormones and elation to stop their relationship going a bit haywire. The infamous Weasley talent for procreation was clearly a full trait of Ron’s as she came to him merely a month after the victory, red-eyed and horrified at her own stupidity: she was pregnant and didn’t want her life to come to a hold, not now, when all the options were once again on the table.

He had merely smiled at her, took her in his arms and told her it was going to be all right – if she was up to it, he was willing to stay home and take care of the baby, so she could pursue her dream of academic career. Secretly he was glad of a small break from Hogwarts. A place held too many painful memories for him at that moment and – well, he could use being a favourite son of his mother’s for once! Molly has gone absolutely spare with happiness once she found out she was going to be a grandmother and Ron knew that he wouldn’t have to lift a finger and this would still be the most pampered and loved baby on the planet.

The strangest reaction was from Harry and it caught him completely off guard. His best mate simply froze, when he was given the news. Froze, as in his whole world coming to a halt, his eyes huge and deep green as a pair of bottomless ponds. Ron got nervous, waiting for his reaction. “Harry, mate... I thought you’d be happy for us...”

“And I am, god, sorry, Ron, I am, of course I’m happy!” Harry woke up from his stupor with just a little too much enthusiasm for Ron to ignore. “Then what is it?” asked Ron with a scowl. “Is it that Auror thing? It’s not that I don’t want to do it, Harry, it will just have to get... delayed a little bit. Look, I really need to help Hermione out, she going bonkers, thinking that she will have to give all her dreams up... and for me, of all people!” he tried to make a joke, but Harry’s eyes wouldn’t smile along with his mouth.

“I’d give anything up for you, Ron,” he said simply and took his breath away. But seeing how dumbfounded those words have left him, he added in a low voice, as if talking to himself: “Oh, for god’s sake, give yourself more credit, you’re a bloody prize, Ron and she knows that! So – what now...? I suppose you’ll be getting married next?” he asked, trying to sound as if he was joking, but a simple stare from Ron left him speechless.

They had to get married, of course they had to. Molly would hex him back to the Middle Ages if they didn’t and Hermione was crying herself to exhaustion in his arms once he had proposed, his silly little sap.... Ron knew how to make things right and he knew there was no other way – rather than a few drastic options he preferred not to think about – to get through this with everyone emerging unscathed. Everyone but Harry, it would seem.

His clear lack of appreciation for the whole awkward situation left Ron confused. He didn’t understand what it was that he’s gone and done this time – at least nothing to hurt _him_ , to be sure! - so he honestly didn’t know how to fix this. Harry turned around as if he was feeling sick and covered his face with the palms of his hands, as if trying to hide the emotions on from the world to see. “Harry, what is it? Please, talk to me! I don’t know what else to do... I thought I’d ask you to be my best man, but if you think this is such a lousy idea...”

The desperation in his voice finally drew Harry to spin around on his heel and launch himself at his best mate: “No, Ron, no... I’m sorry, I’m just... of course I’ll be your best man, nothing would give me greater honour, it’s just... I’m just shocked... it is all so fast and unexpected!”

Ron laughed in a ragged voice, barely holding back the tears of relief, and pulled Harry in one of his bear hugs, absent-mindedly kissing the top of unruly black hair. Everything was going to be all right now, that he had his best mate on his side. He felt Harry go rigid in his arms and got frightened that he’d applied a bit too much rough force in his affection, so he loosened his grip on the raven-haired youth, only to find green eyes staring at him at such close proximity that it formed a lump in his throat and made him acutely aware of all the wrong body parts. Then he felt wetness on his chest and when he looked down in confusion, he saw marks of what looked like tears where Harry’s cheeks were pressed into his shirt – except Harry _never_ cried... not ever. Not when he was abused and starved by the Dursleys, not when he was tormented by the Dark lord, not even when Sirius died... never. Up until now.

“Harry... “ he started with an insecurity in his voice, but Harry was already gone. He disapparated right from his arms, leaving Ron feeling confused and self-conscious, only to return in the evening in the company of his sister and begged his forgiveness.

He had been nothing but a perfect friend from that day on, his idea of a wedding present being simply, that he would pay for the whole thing. Ron and Hermione wouldn’t hear of it, until Harry pulled him aside and told him in a scolding voice, that every girl deserved to have a wedding of her dreams and if Ron wasn’t in the right state to give it to her, he can feel free to pay him back by paying for _his_ wedding, but this one is going on Harry's tab or he will renounce him!

They could do nothing more than to gratefully accept after that. Harry was going out of his way to prove it to Ron how very supportive he was of their plans, practically running the whole show once Hermione got too clumsy to get everything organized. And he was right behind Ron during the ceremony and Ron couldn’t think of anything wrong with the glance he stole at his best friend right before he uttered the binding “I do.” It was a stolen moment that shook Ron to the core. Harry’s green eyes were brilliant with tears, looking every bit like a dam, holding incomprehensible emotions at bay. There was pain there, that made Harry’s forced smile look like a mask and though Ron knew, no one would be able to see the difference; he knew that somehow he had made Harry deeply unhappy and it had bothered him to no end.

But still a perfect friend to a pitch, Harry would never let his biggest fears come true: he never left him behind. At the end of every single working assignment that brought him home he would drop by at the apartment Ron and Hermione rented on the outskirts of London, just sharing a cup of tea and his experience with Ron, “chill out” as he called it. And invariably he would take Ron out at the end of such a day, no matter the weather, either for a round of Quidditch or a pint in the near-by pub, just to make sure he maintained some form of social presence.

Once the baby had arrived and Hermione picked up her studies and work, Ron expected things to change, but he was surprised to find out that Harry would still show up as often as usual to sit next to Ron quietly and cuddle the little princess, sometimes singing to her Muggle lullabies in a soft voice. Those intimate moments were secretly Ron’s favourite part of the day and he came to find weekends, which Harry spent with Ginny, increasingly boring.

He surprised himself by being fully capable of handling the baby and found out he actually enjoyed it. He was his mother’s son after all. So when about half a year after Rose was born Hermione showed up from St. Mungo’s completely scandalized with news that somehow her elaborate contraceptive charms didn’t work and she was pregnant _again_ and with _twins_ this time! - he actually got a laugh and even a little bit of pride out of it: “It’s the Weasley magic, love, we’re a force of nature to be reckoned with!” When she cried her frustration out with hot tears, he managed to console her and told her, that maybe it is best that they get the whole baby-business out of the way in one go, just have the twins and then she’ll be able to once again focus on her career fully.

He was dead-set on making this arrangement work, even though he was increasingly beginning to feel left behind. Everyone of his small group of friends has already earned their education and assumed a role in this new post-war world, but he was well on his way to sinking back into his feeling of being insignificant. After having completed his N.E.W.T.s Harry went on to become an Auror par excellence, as they always knew he was going to be, and as such he became one of the most esteemed and high-profile Ministry officials. Hermione was given her own department to run at the Ministry s soon as she made it out of school and even Ginny, his little sister has taken him over, passing her N.E.W.T.s with such excellent marks that she was directly offered a job at Hogwarts as a Defence against the dark arts professor, making his mother absolutely swollen with pride and joy.

Given Harry’s devotion to Ron’s children, it was curious enough, that Harry and Ginny decided to wait with forming a family. Ron always assumed it was Ginny who was pulling the breaks, not wanting to choose between having a career and rising a family – and Harry staying home was never really an option, surely the Minister would skin him alive! But then one day he overheard Ginny grumpily complain to Hermione, that her relationship seemed to have stalled since every time she mentioned “getting more serious” or “becoming a family” to Harry, he would find a way out of the conversation without any promises made and she was growing increasingly annoyed with that.

So Ron decided to mention it to Harry. Though not very eager to push him towards any decisions he didn’t want to make, he really did hate seeing his little sister unhappy and frankly – why _shouldn’t_ they start a family? Harry was clearly enjoying the company of his children, he’s been dedicated to his relationship with Ginny for years at that point and well, Ron figured, his kids _could_ use a cousin or two to play with.

So he probed Harry with a few questions, but got a surprisingly chilly “Did Ginny put you up to this?” reply that shocked him and caused his famous red-headed temper to erupt.

“So family life is good enough for me, but not for you, Mr. I-am-so-important? I will have you know that I don’t enjoy my sister being hurt and fooled into believing that she had a future with you while all this time you’ve been living your urges to have a family vicariously, through my children! For Merlin’s sake, Harry, I know you crave family, _I know you do!_ I look at you with Hugo and I can see you adore him... and he adores you, you’ll make an absolutely smashing dad! What’s going on here, mate?!”

He saw Harry go pale and realized too late that his words cut deeper than he meant them to. Harry had almost staggered towards the door, when Ron caught him in two long strides and squeezed his wiry lean body into one of his overwhelming hugs.

“God, I’m sorry, Harry... I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to... I don’t know what came over me... You’ve been this absolutely amazing friend to me all this months, anyone would have left me behind with the boring and uninspiring life I lead and you keep on coming back and I kick you in your teeth first chance I get... I’m so sorry… love, please don’t leave... I just want everyone to be happy...”

Once again he felt Harry’s frame turn to stone in his embrace and when he looked down on his friend, the green orbs were shiny like two precious stones and Harry asked him breathless: “ _What_... did you call me?! What did you call me right now, Ron?!”

Confused and raw and frightened and angry, Ron didn’t realize he shared a piece of his heart that Harry was never meant to see and he bit his lip not to betray the tempest that was going on inside him under that unfathomable green stare. But he knew better than to try and fool Harry. What Harry wanted, Harry got and if he wanted the truth, there wasn’t a damn thing Ron could do about that...

“Love... I called you love...” he said quietly, finally admitting it to himself as much as to his best mate and allowed himself for once to drown in those green ponds. As Harry’s thin fingers cupped Ron’s face without breaking the gaze, the redhead became acutely aware of the warm breath caressing his mouth from mere inches away, of their bodies still fused together, suddenly awash with the tension that should have no place between them, that they should have no name for...

And it would all come to a sudden halt when they heard a sound of flooing from the fireplace downstairs and unmistakable voice of Hermione’s calling for them: “Ron, I’m home... Hello, Harry, want to stay for dinner?”

They didn’t jump from each other like they do in the Muggle movies, when caught in the act, they simply let their embrace dissolve as they kept on staring at each other and Ron’s ocean blue eyes never left Harry’s even when he yelled a reply “We’re here, Mione, Harry is... staying... for dinner.”

It’s been months since he’s seen Harry’s eyes shine like this and Ron had a feeling he’s just given his best mate a priceless gift.

“Actually, I’m not, Hermione,” Harry said unexpectedly with a small smile suddenly playing on his lips. “I’ve got some business to attend to.”

And he graced Ron with such a brilliant and warm smile that his knees almost buckled and he disapparated without any further explanation. When Ron and Hermione finally settled in front of the fireplace for the evening, a memory of Harry’s bizarre behaviour was still running in Ron’s head. And then suddenly their fireplace came to life and out stumbled squealing and hyper-happy Ginny:

“Oh, sweet Merlin, he did it! He truly did it! He proposed! Oh, my god, Hermione, I’m getting married!”

Hugging and squealing in joy Hermione hugged his sister and admired her gigantic ring and wanted to know all the blissful details, but Ginny suddenly stopped in her track and launched at Ron, who sat their completely dumbfounded and clueless.

“Thank you, Ronnie, thank you!” she exclaimed, suddenly whimpering.

“What...?” Ron didn’t manage more than that when Ginny hugged him with sincere love and gratitude.

“He told me, Ron. Harry told me that you “put him in his place” and made him see what a fool he was and you know Harry... when he screws something up, he would go out of his way to make amends. So... whatever it was, you told him, thank you, brother dear!” she said, beaming with so much joy and excitement that it almost made him spill those tears he was saving for himself.

“You’re welcome, little sis,” he mumbled, not really sure which part of his “talk” prompted Harry to do something so rashly after he’s been avoiding it for years.

“Must go tell mom!” Ginny screamed excitedly, realizing too late that she might have woken up the children, as little Rose wandered into the living room sleepy-eyed. “Go, girl, go!” Hermione waived her away, quickly lifting Rose in her arms and hushing her back to slumber. Standing under the doorframe she turned to Ron and asked curiously: “What on God’s given Earth _did_ you tell Harry, Ron?”

“The truth,” slipped out of Ron’s mouth before he could muster up a convincing lie. And seeing his confused expression his wife was smart enough not to probe further.

But it seemed like finally everything was going to change.


	6. Ron: Winds of change

The next day Harry didn’t show up, no note, no explanation. He didn’t show up a day after that either and before Ron knew it, almost a month had gone by and still no sign of Harry. Ron was growing desperate. It was the longest they have been apart since the Horcrux hunt, when he had so shamefully abandoned his best friends. He might have given Ginny what she wanted, but Ron was ready to believe he was going to pay the ultimate price in Harry’s friendship. He became depressed and moody, especially when little Hugo kept on pestering him about “Ally?” and Hermione continuously threw worried glances in his direction.

And it didn’t help that Ginny popped by every day, forever discussing her wedding plans in detail with Hermione, duly informing her about all the wonderful things Harry did for her, while he felt ever more left out and forgotten. Harry had not even asked him to be his best man, he had not even broke the news about the wedding himself, he just let Ginny handle it and Ron was slowly coming to terms with the fact that Harry might not want him involved.

It pained him to no end and he kept on running their last conversation in his head until it was buzzing and still he came no closer to relieving his distress. He finally reached the boiling point when little Hugo one more time prompted him about “Ally?”

“I don’t know where Harry is, all right!?” he had bellowed at the poor child, who stood rooted to the floor staring at his looming dad as he’d never seen him before. “I don’t know if he’s coming back, I don’t know if he cares, I wish I didn’t care!” he had howled and immediately collapsed to his knees when he saw the big tears on a frightened face that might as well have been his own.

“Merlin... please... I’m sorry, Hugo, please don’t cry... “ he tried to comfort the little ginger when a small face contorted in fear and sadness. “Godric, pumpkin, I’m sorry... I really don’t know where Harry is, but I’m sure he’ll be back soon to see you. He loves you, at least he loves you,” he tried to tell him in a calm voice, trying to sound confident. And it must have been the tears in his big dad’s eyes and the echo of genuine pain in his voice that made Hugo look up with his ocean blue eyes, so similar to his own and reach up with his tiny hands to brush against his dad’s face.

“Looooove Ally,” he declared in a small voice which finally undid Ron and forced his tears to run unabashedly . “God, yes, I know... I... you... we love Harry... and he’ll be back, I promise you, my little shiny knob!” he forced a smile through his tears, pressing on his little nose with his index finger, praying to all the souls of great wizards of the past that he was right.

On top of that, he had a terrible row with Hermione in the afternoon. She had caught him playing with the twins, referring to himself as “daddy, the troll of the family” from the depth of his depression. And she went mental.

“What do you mean, the troll!? I’m supposed to be the smartest witch of my generation, do you honestly think I would even _look_ at you twice if you weren’t every bit as brilliant as I _know_ you are! For Merlin’s sake, look how you’re managing things, like a strategist supreme, everything is running smoothly around you! I don’t know how our lives would even be possible, let alone happy, if I didn’t let you make all the important decisions! People are bristling with happiness around you, so why can’t you be happy, Ron?!” she had yelled herself sore, but went silent after a look at his complete misery in his posture. “Is this about Harry, Ron? What was it you told him to make him stop coming around?”

“Nothing... I don’t know... just shut up, all right!?” he howled back, but it took more than the aggression in his voice to keep her at bay.

“I will tell you one thing, Ronald Billius Weasley: Stop projecting your low self-esteem onto our children, or you will have another think coming! You are the most fantastic father, you make me feel like a queen and you’ve been nothing but a devoted friend to Harry and if his too short-sighted to see that...”

“Leave Harry out of it, he’s done nothing wrong! He stayed by my side long as it is - after all, what does a loser like me have to offer to someone who actually has friends and a glamorous career!?” his blue eyes were ablaze and there was enough hurt in them for a blind man to see. “I guess he just doesn’t have anything to talk to me about anymore, he’s got Ginny now and...”

“He had Ginny before, you utter _fool!_ ” His wife was now positively seething with rage, as she never before retorted to calling him names. “He needs you more than anything right now, he’s making all this big changes and I know, _I know it_ , Ronald Weasley, that you must have said or done something so drastic and inconsiderate only _you_ bloody well know how to stop him from coming here! And if you won’t tell me, I will go and ask _him_ , because I cannot stand another minute seeing you this miserable!”

“I told you to leave Harry out of it, which part of _O.U.T._ you don’t understand, woman?! For fuck’s sake, you’re supposed to be this super-smart witch and yet you don’t know when to back off even when your own husband asks you to! Can’t you just let me off the bloody hook for once?! Haven’t I done enough to deserve it, I’ve got nothing left to give, Hermione!” 

She went white in shock as he stared at her wild-eyed and repeated quietly: “Nothing left to give, Mione... not to you, not to Harry... I’m empty.”

“Oh, sweet Merlin, Ron, I’m sorry... I never meant to say all those horrible things to you!” she ran into his embrace and hugged him for dear life. He closed his arms around her, but her warmth had not touched him as if he was cast in a frozen layer of his misery. “I just want you to see how incredible you are, how happy you make everyone around you, including...” she cut herself short at this point because clearly bringing up the issue of Harry wasn’t going to take this conversation in a promising direction. The tide between these two always did run deeper than she was able to fathom, so... instead she wiped her eyes clear of tears and announced:

“You know what, Ronald Weasley? I think the time has come for you to go back to school!”

“What? Wait, no, Hermione, that’s not what I meant.... I just...”

But his adamant wife has already made her decision and he knew it was a lost cause when he saw _that_ look her eyes.

“Well, it’s about time you stop making your life all about others and step out into the real world, Mr. I-was-left-behind! You’re taking your N.E.W.T.s this year, so help me god! I’m going to make arrangements first thing tomorrow morning, I’ll speak to Minerva about enrolling you and I will tutor you myself, if I have to. I know Molly will be thrilled to take over the children, she’s always moaning about how lonely and silent the Burrow has gone!”

Staring at her open-mouthed he was once again reminded what a wondrously warm, brilliant and compassionate girl his little saviour-of-house-elves-wife was. He felt raw and vulnerable and insecure and strangely happy at the thought of going back to Hogwarts where it all begun all those years ago, as if life was willing to offer him a second chance. And yet just thinking about going out there after all this time was intimidating as hell and he wasn’t about to jump in it head first. What was the point after all, if he got through school, even got his dream job as Auror and had to work next to Harry only to have his once-best mate avoid him...

“Just... give me a moment there, Mione.... Let me think it over, sleep on it…” he hugged her more sincerely, his voice tired from all the conflicting emotions. He sensed her disappointment and much in his fashion he tried to console her: “After all, it’s hard enough to wrap my head around the idea of my sister teaching me Defence against the dark arts courses ... Come to think of it, maybe she’ll finally teach me how to fend off her own hexes, now, it _would_ be worth going back just for _that_!”

But clearly he wasn’t meant to be considering. As if on cue the floo suddenly roared to life in their fireplace and out of it stepped Harry, holding Ginny’s hand. Ron froze solid, unable to take his eyes away from his sorely missed best mate, who looked suspiciously smug, his face reflecting something like pride. And Ginny... Ginny was glowing with an entirely different softness.

“Hello.... erm... I know this is unexpected... “ she said, Weasley-red and uncharacteristically nervous. “But... well, Harry wanted you to be the first to know...” she picked up, sounding strangely insecure... “I... we’re pregnant,” she finally uttered awkwardly as if she wasn’t sure, how to feel about it herself.

“Oh, sweet Godric and Rowena, so you are!” exclaimed Hermione excitedly and clapped her hands together. “And about time, too, if you don’t mind me saying so! I’m so happy for you, sweetie!!!”

Ginny visibly relaxed at these words and soon they were chatting in hushed animated voices about all things “baby”, giggling and hugging and even wiping the tears of each other’s faces.

Ron felt Harry’s green gaze upon him, but he was so over-flown with confused emotions that he was afraid to move. Relief coursed through his veins along with searing anger and an awkward feeling that the cards have once again been shuffled. Not knowing if he’s going to end up smacking Harry across the face or doing something quite the opposite, which might make the situation infinitely more complicated, he opted to do the only thing that seemed safe. He slipped out of the room, still feeling Harry’s penetrating eyes on his back and returned shortly with a bleary eyed Hugo in his hands.

“Here’s someone that missed you terribly,” he said gently with a lump in his throat, finally looking in Harry’s eyes and he saw it all there... the regret, the pride and that feeling that came strangely close to making Ron dissolve and spill out his soul to his Harry.

“Ally!!!” the little one exclaimed happily and when Harry quickly took hold of little Hugo and squeezed him tightly in his arms like he wasn’t about to let go, it was not clear, who missed whom the most.

“Loooove Ally!” little one snuggled against his favourite person and Ron was surprised to see tears shimmering on top of those jet black eyelashes – Harry _never_ cried, right? “Love papa, love Ally!” the little one insisted, grabbing Ron by the hair from Harry’s embrace and pulling them together.

“Oh, Hugo, you’re such a little fool...” whispered Ron, feeling like someone slashed him open right there and then and not knowing how _he_ is going to hold back the tears, really, he was becoming such an impossible sap.

“Don’t you listen to your dad, Hugo!” he heard Harry whisper almost feverishly and Ron felt something warm and wet slide down his cheeks where his face was pressed against Harry’s, making him acutely aware of the lump in this throat. “Don’t you listen to this big oaf of your dad, little pumpkin, you’re the smartest one around here...”

Harry smiled at the happy little boy in his arms, the wet streaks on his cheeks the only sign left of his weakness, and then looked straight at Ron with eyes as big as Universe: “I did it, Ron. I did what you wanted me to do. It took me a while, but I did it. So you and I... so we can finally be a family. You were right... I did want a family, but there can be no family for me without you in it,” he whispered never taking his eyes of Ron, making him shiver to the core. “I’ll make you my family, Ron, one way or another,” he promised in a soft voice, passion in it unmistakable, and Ron would have fallen apart right there and then, if it wasn’t for Ginny floating by.

“Why have you two gone so quiet?” she patted her brother on his back, oblivious to anything but her own happiness. Ron was startled and looked at Harry pleadingly as to ask him not to ravage his insides further with his words. Harry finally lowered his gaze and Ron was free to think at last. His brain was working nervously, all the time aware just how close he came to allowing his sister a glimpse at his wretched soul and he really shouldn’t, because Ginny deserved better... Hell, she deserved the best, he decided and he’s not going to let the chaos reigning inside him get in a way of that. So he took a big gulp of air and said bravely: “Oh, well,... erm... I was just about to tell Harry my news...”

Despite his best efforts his voice was shaking slightly, his eyes suddenly everywhere but on his best mate. “Erm... I guess Hermione and I decided it was time for me to go back to school...” he said sheepishly, afraid to look at the raven-haired youth. “We thought that I should maybe... you know... finish what I started and... well, I suppose start a career after that... if anyone will have me...” he added self-consciously, feeling the flush spreading across his skin, acutely aware of the full weight of Harry’s gaze upon him.

For the slightest of moments there was a silence, just enough to make his insecurities soar and then it felt like the whole hell broke loose. Without any consideration of her new state of a mother-to-be Harry unceremoniously dropped Hugo in Ginny’s arms and launched himself at Ron as fiercely as his lithe frame would allow. “ _Thankyouthankyouthankyou_...” he whispered like a man gone mad into Ron’s ear then suddenly letting him go and jumping almost to the ceiling, just to come back to the ground trying to crush his best mate in his embrace.

His green eyes shone like flames as if he finally got a present of a life-time, his unconcealed enthusiasm rendered Ron speechless, moved and profoundly grateful.

“If someone will have you...” he said quietly. “I’ll have you, Ron. You’re meant to be with... to be next to me,” he finally noticed Ginny was still standing close by, looking increasingly annoyed. Still, he held his gaze, cause that’s what made him the Boy-who-lived, he was unrelentingly fearless: “I’ll have you, I’ll back you up, l will _dare_ them to throw anyone at me who will disagree! I’ll put in all my worth if I have to!”

“Bloody hell, Harry!” said Ron and Ginny in unison, though for very different reasons. “And where was this enthusiasm when I told you that you’ll be a dad soon?!” said Ginny sharply, jealousy unmistakably ringing through her words. Harry looked at her as if he only now realized that his words might have hurt her and Ron finally came to his senses enough to try and stifle the beginning of an unwelcome row:

“And to think you had me believe all these years that being an Auror was all that, Harry!” he said with mocked indignation. “Only to come here now and tell me that even someone like _me_ will be an improvement?! Honestly, man, I’ll have to reconsider my choice of career; it seems to me that being an Auror isn’t at all as glamorous as it’s supposed to be!”

“Now, now children...” Hermione approached quickly, taking sleepy Hugo from the hands of still fuming Ginny. “Two wonderful news in one day and still we find a reason to fight... Honestly, the lot of you is fit for a kindergarten!”

“Please, let me...” asked Harry pleadingly, reaching once again for the little ginger, confusedly starring at adults, passing him around like a cookie. “Can I please be the one...? I’ve missed him so!” he squeezed a small warm body tightly into his embrace and little man seemed quite happy to settle there for good.

“Oh, I guess it’s all right, but be quick about it, it’s way past his bed time, honestly, I don’t know what Ron was thinking, waking him up like that!” said Hermione trying to sound stern, but visibly melting at the sight of Harry cuddling up against her youngest child. “And Hugo, don’t you dare blackmail Uncle Harry into more than one bed-time story!” she added quickly, fully aware that Harry was nothing but a putty under little Hugo’s pleading eyes.

Once Harry removed himself from the scene, Ginny threw a cold look to her brother, only to be lead away by Hermione. She began talking to her at a fast pace, holding her hand as if she was trying to stop her from leaving, but her words were too quiet for Ron to understand. And frankly, he couldn’t have cared less. He had enough drama for one evening and he was so dishevelled on the inside that he craved nothing but a cold butterbeer and some good company to put his storms to rest. And when Harry came back a few minutes later, he got both.


	7. Ron: Can't stop the waves in motion

They’ve picked it up that day where they left it, as if the last couple of weeks never happened, with Harry dropping by regularly by the apartment, helping Ron with his chores and children, the only difference being that now they had a new, seemingly bottomless topic for their conversation: their careers were finally going to align and Harry was trying his best to bring Ron up to speed with everything that was going on “in the business” as he referred to it.

And Ron would never admit to anyone, but there were also endless moments in which they were getting lost in each others’ eyes, stolen glances and shy smiles, seemingly coincidental touches that left them shivering and tense and frightened. And inevitably it came… a moment of carelessness and suddenly he found himself offering Harry a back rub after he had complained of a straining Auror practice. And Harry grabbed him by the word like a man drowning, so when he realized what he had done, it was already too late.

With a heart thumping loudly in his chest he tried to buy some time by going to check on the children, having their afternoon nap, but he couldn’t stay there forever, could he? So he returned to the living room slowly, just to stop by the door, uncertain of his future actions. But once he looked into those brilliant green eyes he knew he couldn't turn back, he wasn’t going to. He approached Harry, sitting on the sofa, wordlessly staring at him as if he was looking at him for the first time. He sat next to him almost shyly, then lifted his blue gaze to match the green stare and began to remove Harry’s shirt, button by button. Much too soon he had fingers gently sliding over the yellow greenish bruises Harry’s ribs got from impacts at practice and when he continued to stare into the big green eyes there was so much silent pleading there that it almost stopped his heart.

Never saying a word he had turned Harry on his stomach and pushed him down on the sofa, straddling his legs just under his backside.  Few gentle strokes down from his neck down his spine was all it took to have Harry panting, arching against him and moaning “ _Please, Ron, please…_ ” . His own shaft was so heavy and hard against Harry’s soft orbs that all it took was gentle rocking as he moved his hands down Harry’s back to make him feel there was no way he could ever stop now. He had to have him, he had to…  

But as if their passion was star-crossed, there were suddenly children’s voices calling for him from the other room and the last thing he remembered before fleeing was his own yelp of frustration at the unfulfilled desire and Harry’s begging _“Oh, god, Ron, no, please don’t go…”_ Then he literally ran away into the arms of his kids, feeling ashamed and terrified and incredibly turned on. The next thing he knew his living room exploded with all the abundant magic of Harry’s tension and the young wizard cry for release was so raw and needy that it broke his heart and made him want to dig his fingers into his eyes: “ _Ron!_ ”

Harry left, unable to face him and Ron thanked all the stars in heaven that Molly Weasley was his mother and that he had learnt the charms for cleaning up and repairing practically in his cradle. He wasn’t sure he was ever going to be able to look Harry in the eye after that, but his best friend clearly had more self control than he did. He came around the following day just as if nothing had happened, but he too, seemed to have finally realized that in the view of his rapidly approaching wedding it was an awful idea to keep looking at each other with inevitable longing. In fact, he behaved strangely distant; all smiles on the surface, while beneath it all seemed numb.

The only time that Ron managed to break through the distance Harry put between them was, when he offered to pay for the rings. “What rings?” said Harry absent-mindedly as if he had just heard for the first time he was getting married.

“Oh, bloody hell, Harry!” said Ron slightly annoyed. “Wedding rings, of course! You have to have those, if you want to get married!”

“But I don’t want to get…” said Harry with a sudden burst of emotions and stopped himself dead in his track. Ron’s eyes went wide as skies and he looked at his best mate with genuine hurt.

“But, Harry…”

“Sure, whatever, the rings… what about them?”

“Well, I want to be the one to pay for them,” said Ron with a small hint of insecurity in his voice. “Why on bloody Earth for?” shot Harry rudely. “It’s not like I can’t afford them!”

“I know that… I know,” Ron grew more self-conscious with every word. “But I really want to be able to do something for you… I mean, you paid for _my_ whole wedding and you won’t even allow me to pay for drinks for the guests on this one…”

“Ron, there will be like 200 people plus, if you pay for the drinks for the guests, you’ll have to work until _after_ you’re buried for 20 years!” barked Harry annoyed.

“Fine, whatever…” it was Ron’s turn to sulk now. If Harry was going to be such an obstinate pig, then he can have his wedding in the Sahara desert with guests dying of thirst, for all he cared! He turned around swiftly, to hide sudden tears of pain and offence suddenly gathered on top of his eyelashes. Harry must think him such a loser, not willing to take anything from him… But right before he stormed away, he felt Harry’s arm on his shoulder and Harry said softly, sounding almost like the real thing hiding under all that numbness: “I’m sorry, Ron… I should have known… I’m just such a… I don’t want to… oh, bloody hell, of course you can pay for the rings, I’d _love_ you to pay for the rings, in fact, I’m _begging_ you to pay for the damn rings… I don’t know which to choose anyway, so I could use some help…”

Ron smiled through the tears he was about to spill, spilling a few accidentally, of course – what a cry-baby he was! – and took a deep breath of relief. That was his Harry, right there, fucking up and then making amends spectacularly. But then Harry's words sank in properly.

“You want me to come with you, to choose your rings?” he said almost incredulously. “Me, not Ginny?”

“Well, yes, why not? Is there any rule that you have to take the bride-to-be?” ask Harry bluntly.

“Well, no…” said Ron confused. “It’s just a habit…”

“Oh, good, cause I’d rather have you, if you don’t mind,” said Harry in a satisfied voice and when he saw Ron’s disbelieving look he said matter-of-factly: “Oh, c’mon, Ron, it will be fun. This is your little sister we’re talking about; you know her taste better than me. Besides, it will be a nice surprise for her, not knowing what she’s getting…”

“All right, then, if that’s what you think…” said Ron, shooting him a side-glance, still not entirely convinced. “But on one condition – and you must promise me this one thing: You will not look at the price tag! I absolutely forbid it! You will chose the rings you like and I’ll pay for them if it takes me from this day to the day I fall off the undertaker’s shovel, understood!?”

And Harry understood. And held true to his word. Just not quite like how Ron expected him to. Because when they got to the goldsmith, Harry simply took Ron’s left hand and said in an adamant voice: “Can you make me one like that?”

Ron’s eyes went as wide as galleons and he hissed quietly to his best-mate: “Harry! Why would you want a ring exactly like mine?! At least look around, I’m sure there’s plenty of choice, you’ll find something you really like…”

“Oh, I found myself something I really like, Ron,” said Harry quietly and with unexpected bitterness. “Don’t you worry about that… that, on your finger, is exactly the ring I’d like to have.”

And Ron was left speechless. He saw it in Harry’s eyes, a whole universe of words that will never be spoken and it hurt like acid on fresh wound. “One like that, then,” he finally spoke to the goldsmith. “And please make another one in smaller size, I will have my sister’s finger measured and I will let you know the size tomorrow, if that’s OK,” he spoke almost apologetically as if he only just remembered that there was another person to this wedding. They were silent on their way back and when they reached Harry’s home, Ron didn’t know how to say goodbye, so his spoke softly, almost pleadingly: “Harry…”

“Happy with my choice, Ron?” Harry cut through his words with abandon, staring at him almost cruelly. “Good, then… expensive, those rings, just like you wanted them to be… priceless, really, true value of my heart.”

“Harry, please, don’t…” said Ron in despair, but Harry already turned around and shut the door in his face, effectively freezing him to the spot.

The rings really weren’t that expensive – aware that Harry was paying for their wedding, Ron and Hermione didn’t really go for luxury – but when Ron returned to the goldsmith the next day on his own, he knew, he was about to add just a bit more to the price.

“Can you engrave those rings, magically?” was the first thing he wanted to know.

“Well, yes, of course," was the surprised answer by the goldsmith. “Though I must let you know, that most couples prefer the engravings to be the way Muggles do it – you see, the magical engravings don’t show, unless you speak the words that are engraved…”

“Good, then,” Ron interrupted him, not interested in further explanation. “You will do the date of the wedding the Muggle way. But here’s what I also want you to do…” And he told he goldsmith exactly what he wanted him to do, confusing him beyond belief, but when he left that day, he had two magically engraved rings on him, that put a small smile on his face.

From that day on Harry and Ron both seemed to be trying even harder to maintain their precious balance, with everything being so perfect on the outside; with so much to be lost if anyone of them dared to cross the line again... So they left things as they were, unspoken, unfulfilled, and luckily Ginny’s elaborate wedding plans left them with plenty of material to distract them from underlying currents.

The wedding... well, it happened and right now Ron was in no state to think what a close call it was, with him blundering so spectacularly in the last moment...  But in the end Ginny got her day in the spotlight and when Ron saw her positively glowing by Harry’s side, he knew he had made the right decision, even though it meant avoiding being alone with Harry since it took place four weeks ago.


	8. Ron: Collision

He knew he was going to have to face him at one point or another, Harry sure wasn’t backing off with his attempts to corner him alone, but he just wasn’t ready yet, he didn’t know what to say, what to do to keep the precious balance, not to let things escalate quickly one way or another. With both their tempers and so many things left half-way between them, he knew he was running on borrowed time, but that’s what just he needed.... time, he told himself, hoping against hope that his vision is going to clear and over-heated feelings are going to get a much-needed breeze.

 So it wasn’t that he had no care in this world, lying here in the sunlit lawn of his old school, but for a moment in time, he could push it all aside: no snotty noses to wipe, no killer early hours to wake up to, no little sibling-bickering to put to peace, no skilful planning how to balance things to make everyone happy...

He knew that soon enough he will be over-flooded with a workload he couldn’t yet fathom; he’s already been through the endless nights with Hermione, when he would more often than not wake up to an empty bed only to find her half-mad with study fever in her study room. If no one else, his sister is going to make sure that the “distinguished war hero” gets no special treatment and he knew he was going to have to earn every one of his exams with sweat, headaches and tireless work just like the rest of his class-mates. But right now none of that mattered. After a long time he felt simply and completely happy.

It was so liberating and invigorating to have no one to care about but himself, to feel young and free once again, that he felt almost ecstatic. Woken up by a sudden shadow that blocked the sun in front of him, his face dissolved in one of his heart-stopping brilliant smiles as he said matter-of-factly: “Cheers, mate, my freckles were about to go on a rampage-“ when his smile froze at the sight of a familiar silver-blond head staring down at him with an incomprehensible expression on his patrician features.

“What the fuck... _Malfoy_?!” Ron asked incredulously. Surely, it couldn’t be! He didn’t remember seeing his childhood nemesis since the three of them had saved his life on the day of the battle for Hogwarts and yet he somehow managed to swim into his thoughts just moments before, only to emerge in front of him in flesh and blood. Just his luck! What on Merlin’s bloody earth was the snake doing in school now?! He would have thought that the rich brat had finished his education years ago - any place but here, of course - and yet, here he was, looking just as haughty and well-bred as if the war had never happened.

Surely, the smirk on the blond’s face was gone – or perhaps just absent for the time being – and his silver eyes lacked menace, but it was still unmistakably him, graceful lean figure in expensive clothes, looking every bit a carbon copy of Lucius in the best of his days.

Ron moaned mentally, cursing the ridiculous sense of humour of the twisted gods that had their hands in his destiny. Is he really going to have to go through this again, the acid insults, the disdain, the back-stabbing remarks? _Is he_?! Dammit, this was supposed to be his year, not to be tainted by taunting and sheer presence of this bastard! His body automatically tensed, fully expecting the arrows of insults headed his way, but Malfoy simply stared at him, as if cast in stone, clearly just as shell-shocked at the sight of him as Ron was.

“Don’t break your eyes, Malfoy!” Ron hissed finally, feeling increasingly uncomfortable under a silver stare. He got ready to get the hell out of the presence of the annoying git, only to almost falter in surprise at the clasp of long fingers around his wrist, pulling him up on his feet. A light pull of Malfoy’s hand has brought him face to face with the pale youth and from a close proximity he could see specks of gold in the grey eyes. They were so close that he could see the reflection of his own face in his eyes and some kind of sense memory inside him remembered the expensive scent that was as Malfoyian as it got… and then the lean youth shuddered as if he became aware that he’s sharing way too much personal space with a Weasley and Ron suddenly couldn’t pull his wrists free from his grip fast enough.

“Weasley...” he heard behind him, Malfoy’s voice huskier than he remembered and sounding almost surprised as if he just woke up from a reverie, but Ron had already turned around and set his pace towards the area, designated for their classes. Feeling his eyes on his back, he felt his ears turn familiar red, which had a nasty habit of happening a lot when he was around his adversary, but he couldn’t stop an unwelcome thought from forming: whatever one could say of Malfoy, the man was as handsome as they came. And it was not even his expensive clothes and impeccable posture that made him attractive, there was something else... something that had to do with those incomprehensible grey eyes surrounded by impossibly long eyelashes and with a gentle tilt of his head that captured the sunlight in his long blond hair...  Sweet Merlin, _what_ was he turning into, thinking of Malfoy’s good looks, someone better hand him a rope and find him a tree and be quick about it!

Walking away as fast as he could, he felt a familiar feeling of inadequacy and insignificance he always associated with Malfoy’s presence. For fuck’s sake is he _ever_ going to be free of this horrible feeling of poverty that dwelled somewhere deep inside of him, making him feel lost and not enough? He was a decorated war hero, for crying out loud, he had a wife and three kids and he was on his way to a career, how come he still felt like he had something to prove whenever that horrible rich kid was around?

“Well, not this time, you don’t!” he was fuming silently. “You don’t get to mock me and mine _this time_ around, this time you’re going to get as good as you’re going to give!”

He still felt a powerful surge of anger coursing through his veins when he dropped his books on the first available bench.  So engrossed was he into his own contemplations that he never noticed what a quiet storm his appearance caused among his peers. A wave of animated whispers and nervous giggles followed him from the moment he entered the classroom and several of his school mates moved their books aside quickly in hope he would choose to sit next to them.

“Oh, sweet Merlin, is it really _him_?!”

“Look at that blazing hair, he’s got to be Weasley, no one else has hair like this!”

“That’s Ron Weasley, all right, my sister went to school with him. She said he beat McGonagall at her chess game as a first year!”

“Oh, dear god is he ever so _gorgeous_!”

“He’s even taller than he looks in the History of Hogwarts!”

“Are you sure he’s married?! He looks so young!”

“Married _and_ three kids, my sister says, she works under his wife in the Ministry, Hermione Granger-Weasley, the smartest witch in England!”

“Why, oh why are all the best ones taken?! I heard Harry Potter got married to his sister just last month, I cried for two days flat!”

Ron didn’t notice any of that, staring at the schedule he got in front of him, trying to make sense of it and then rolling his eyes upwards when he figured out that his first lesson was to be with his sister. Oh, boy, this just got better and better, he thought sourly. And of course he had to be late to find a seat, of course he had to! And now he was forced to sit in the front row, which meant he will constantly be picked out by the teachers and he will have to be careful how to fold those long legs of his, not to cause anyone lasting damage... He might not have noticed the whisper around him, but he certainly noticed when it suddenly came to a halt. He looked across his shoulder and surely enough, in walks Draco Malfoy, head held up high and a calm expression over his delicate features.

He walked past Ron and continued to the other side of the circular classroom, choosing a seat that made him face Ron directly over a clearing ready for the teacher. “Leave it to Malfoy to make a grand entrance,” Ron almost had to smirk. This was certainly not the type of silence _anyone_ would be happy to inspire. It was indeed eerie for a moment – a son of a Death Eater in their midst, surely McGonagall was joking admitting him! But gradually the whisper picked up the pace and Ron was now more aware of what it was all about.

“Is that... _him_?”

“I guess... so. Oh, sweet Merlin, what a day! First Ronald Weasley, now Draco Malfoy! My sister is going to positively _die_ of envy that she could not be here! She always was mental about the Malfoys, reading all the fashion advice the Prophet picked up by watching his mother attend this ball or the other! And she never told me how handsome he was!”

“I guess she was ashamed to fancy a son of a Death Eater...”

“Some say he joined the Dark Lord himself, that he still has the mark!”

“Death Eater or not, look at that face, he’s as pretty as a girl! And they still have all that money...”

“He is still single, isn’t he? Please tell me, he’s not off the market!”

“No, my sister said that he goes around a lot, always with this fine young lady or another, but he always leaves by himself...  seems like no one is good enough for His Highness...”

“ _Oh.My.Word. This_ is going to be _such_ an interesting year! The only thing missing now is Harry Potter and I can just _die_ happy!”

Ron was about to turn around and smirk at the insolent girl, when a soft pop of the apparation cut through the air, announcing their teacher. Well, _blimey_.... looks like someone was about to get their death wish, he thought incredulously as the wiry figure with raven-black hair and electrifying green eyes appeared in their midst, clearly looking _nothing_ like Ginny.

The collective gasp now turned into a hysterical symphony of excited screams as his class mates finally realized who the quiet young man was, wearing the black robes of Auror, positively glowing with authority. “ _Is that_... _is that_...?!” Ron heard an overly-excited girly voice behind him and then it was a loud thump as someone clearly fainted. “ _Harry Potter...._ ” dozens of voices gasped in unison.

And as the green eyes sought him out and his mouth silently formed a word “ _Surprise!_ ”, Ron couldn’t help a blissful grin from spreading across his face. Indeed, what Harry wanted…  

“Bloody hell, count it on Potter to come and save my day, him and his stupid Saviour complex,” he mumbled under his breath, suddenly feeling light and elated and boundlessly happy. When their eyes locked for a long moment he couldn’t help but agree with the unfortunate girl behind him: it was indeed going to be a very interesting year…


	9. Harry: Unrequited love... or is it?

_“This love will be the end of me…”_

End of me, Apocalyptica

 

“Don’t wait for me, honey. You know how first school days are, I might be late!” Harry kissed his heavily pregnant wife on the mouth, just a small peck, accompanied by a genuine smile – he had his reasons today! - that he knew was going to make her day. A lot could be said about his wife, she was temperamental, stubborn, sometimes a bit too aggressive – heritage of growing up with so many older brothers – but boy, did she love him! Harry was well aware that she was infatuated with him ever since she had first laid her eyes on him; therefore it pained him that he had to deceive her, but he was out of options. All is sacred in love and war, he heard a Muggle proverb say, and never one more true in his opinion. He was doing it for love, though it was not the love for her.

Harry Potter, the Saviour of wizarding world, married of late, was madly in love with someone impossible and forbidden and it was driving him crazy, too crazy to make rational decisions. If he was just Harry, a nobody with no last name to matter, things would have been easier, he would have been long ago allowed to follow his own heart and no one would have cared if his choice of a life-partner would have been… unconventional. But he was not just Harry, he was the most famous and prominent wizard of his time, Harry Potter, a text book subject, a face on the front page of every wizarding publication in existence, a household name – yet, only a 21-year old boy madly in love with his best friend. His _male_ best friend, to complicate matters further. His Ron.

It was unforgivable, really, to have a perfect life with a wife that adored him and a baby on the way – and yet he was willing to lay it all on the line for this uncalled-for love for his best mate, who was for the longest time blissfully unaware of just how much Harry needed him. But perhaps it was not so strange and unexpected after all. He was Harry Potter after all, his life began in turmoil and nothing has been easy ever since. He couldn’t help it that his crazy heart, much like Ron, never cared for his public image, and when somewhere down the tumbling road of his young life he came to realize that he had fallen for his best mate, it left him breathless, crestfallen really.

Determined to beat his inappropriate infatuation he feverishly tried to fight his feelings, neglecting them, twisting them, moulding them with force of someone desperate for normality – only to find himself staring at those smiling blue eyes and realize, time and time again, that he’s living a lie. So he finally threw in the towel and admitted to himself that there was precious little he could do: for all he tried, he could not undo this impossible attraction. Like it or not, his heart made his choice and Ron became someone he could not live without – so that was that.

And come to think of it, there really never was anyone else for Harry, no one even came close. After Hagrid had introduced him to the wizarding world at the age of 11, his encounter with arrogant Malfoy at Madame Malkin’s made him painfully aware that this new world presented the same challenges as the Muggle world where he grew up: if he wasn’t up to “the standards”, he was going to be friendless – and then in came Ron and took that fear away on a whim. In a loveless life Harry had lived, Ron was the first person that offered him warmth and closeness he so craved and he dug right into it.

Had he grown up into a family of loving parents and had a bunch of friends to choose from, he might not have been so hopelessly inclined to cling onto this one person whom he came to love first, but he could hardly change who he was, could he? 

Sure, soon enough along came Hermione and as much as Harry cared for her and even looked up to her, he never really could get over the barrier of a girls’ world and their mysterious way of thinking. With guys it was all so much simpler, no needs for big words, endless explanation. What took a whole scroll worth of words with Hermione, only took a friendly pat on the back from Ron and a slightly embarrassed “Ehm… wanna play Exploding Snap?” – and Harry was as good as new.

And then there was Ginny and Harry would be the first to own up, that he was more than just a little taken with what she had to offer once she grew into her feminine form. Except that a little too late he realized that things he appreciated in her the most – her fiery temper, her devotion, even her flaming hair - were in fact things, that another Weasley also had in abundance. After all, it did take him years before he recognized his affection for Ron for what it truly was and even longer to admit it to himself.

It has all started innocently enough, with friendship and trust and little joys of childhood, such as hating Malfoy and competing at Quidditch. Almost all of Harry’s experiences of the wizarding world somehow involved Ron and it was hard to pinpoint a moment, when his simple crystal clear friendship turned a rich deep red shade of love. Like it almost always does, it started with dreams.

The deeper Harry sank into puberty, the more elaborate his dreams became, almost daily involving his best mate in one role or another. At first he had told himself that it was no great matter if he dreamt of his best friend, after all, they’ve been through so much together, it was bound to make a lasting impression, right? But with the rage of hormones full on, he could no longer pretend that his dreams of Ron weren’t down right erotic, since he continuously woke up to a hard-on.

He continued to try to delude himself, _willing_ himself to believe that he was only dreaming of this... _boy_ – god, that was hard enough to admit! - because it was so much easier to imagine doing _that_ , all those hot forbidden things you were not supposed to think about but couldn’t help it, if you actually _knew_ where all the important... bits were and how good it felt if you... he can’t really think about that, not in the broad daylight! As if it wasn’t bad enough that the things Ron was doing to him in his fantasy world at night were so explicit that he had problems looking him in the eye in the morning!

And then Harry would start hearing _him_ touch himself at night, _every_ bloody night, just a subdued moan here, a soft whisper of a sliding hand or even the sound of muscles contracting with the final act – and it got him so randy and needy that he found himself waiting in heat for those betraying sounds to trigger his own mirrored wanking session, always imagining finishing together with Ron… and inevitably leaving him spent and confused and craving for more. At this point his silencing charms were probably good enough to earn him a passing grade in N.E.W.T.s., but there was always an added component of danger of being found out, that made him come so much harder.

And once he had realized that his obsession with Ron was no passing matter he found himself in need of more food for his imagination. Ron was a strangely private person – with all the brothers he grew up with, he rarely ran around overly-exposed as if he was just a little too self-conscious of the awkwardness of his rapidly growing body. In short, it was hard to see him naked and Harry _needed_ it, that sight of a long slightly muscular body with a stellar composition of freckles over the creamy skin…

When he got desperate in the too long nights, he would stare at the curtains pulled around Ron’s bed, hoping to steal a lucky glance of his best mate’s tempting form revealed in the moonlight and biting his lip bloody in hopeless arousal when sometimes he did; he watched him discretely from the shadow of his long jet-black eyelashes in the Quidditch pitch showers so many times that he probably knew his body better than Ron did himself, he fed endlessly on those private images only turning away when he could no longer hide his arousal - and yet he was not allowed to touch… He would never be able to and it was making him miserable and aching and with that longing, the forbidden fruit of his gorgeous redhead friend became so much more irresistible.

With the hopeless direction his love life was headed, he was almost glad when Ginny, who finally bloomed into a beauty that no one could ignore, came on to him hard and in front of everybody, including Ron – so he could really not reject her and for a while he got to pretend that everything was going to be all right. He got his loving, loyal, devoted ginger after all – right? - and the one that he could sport around without anyone getting hurt and who was more than eager to return his affections tenfold. So for a while, all was well, at least on the surface – until they were forced to embark on a hunt for Horcruxes and he was once again stuck in a very close proximity to Ron with no chance to get away.

And it all went down the drain from there. Just watching Ron sleep, as he did so many times at the Burrow, was the single most undoing experience of his young life and – in shortage of other more intimate experiences, also his favourite one. Silken eyelashes, slightly more auburn than his flaming hair, casting long shadows on his cheeks, soft mouth moving in a restless sleep as in chasing a dream, freckles almost shining in the moonlight, that fucking hot muscular body moving under the thin blankets – who the hell was he kidding? He was head over heals in love with this one ginger and given half a chance he would fuck Ron into the floor and live with him happily ever after. And that was a big commitment to be thinking about at seventeen.

After that, no one ever came close to Ron in his mind. To Harry, Ron was more than all other people combined. He could find no end to a list of things that fascinated him about his best friend. He was fun and warm and loving in a quiet, non-aggressive way that often bothered him about Ginny; he was unassuming and at the same time in the heart of every party ever thrown; he could take a joke and return it with the same edge; he was a father so excellent Harry could only hope he could ever be; he was devoted to his friends and family and – much to Harry’s despair – his wife; he was generous to a fault and often selfless – in short, it was _his_ Ron, perfect to a T. And to top it all, he was the sexiest thing that ever walked the Earth; in fact, Harry was sure that given half a chance, the man could melt the ice off the Antarctica with his hotness, and Harry simply couldn’t imagine loving anyone else.

After all these years, Ron was still the first thing he thought of when he woke up. He made sure of that. He’s always had money in a wizarding world and once Ginny was making money as well, they set their hearts on a fashionable villa with a view to a park – the Daily Prophet had praised them for their good choice of property investment, so suitable for the finest couple of the wizarding community – but what sold the place to Harry, was the light. The house was full of it, especially the bedroom. And not bothering to ask Ginny’s opinion, Harry had picked the bedside next to the window, so he could wake up every morning to sunlight. Which was exactly how it was in their dorm in Hogwarts, and the only thing that stood between his bed and the sunlight there, was Ron’s bed. So the first rays of sun would lure his sleep-addled brain to look towards the window, sometimes on the edge of dreams still expecting to see Ron there, stretching cosily in his bed or snoring as carefree as only he could under the sheets. It always brought a smile on his face and helped him face the day. Along with no small amount of pain.

Because Ron was also the last thing on his mind when he lay in his bed sleepless, bothered, unhappy and impossibly hard. He hated himself, yearning so and yet he could not help it, his mind and his body knew where they belonged. God, he craved him so… Sometimes it was just the smell of Ron, attached to the faded clothes he wore at home, showing too much pale golden-freckled skin, an overload of accidental touches during the day, or just the memory of something he did and – always! - his unbelievable smile, that undid Harry to a point that he desperately needed to get his tension out.

He would make Ginny very happy with unexpected fits of lust at home, when uncalled for images of long milky limbs and toned muscles invaded his mind and she was the only relief around. And when those unwelcome feelings flushed over him at work, he tried to literally sweat it out with aggressiveness, earning him many a-commendation from his superiors and making him a most unwelcome partner in training with his co-workers. Not to mention that he was surely on his way of becoming the English champion of wanking.

It was bad enough when he thought his love was unrequited, but ever since Ron let it slip that he had feelings for him, Harry became down right obsessed. Those days he could hardly remember spending time around Ron without a perpetual hard-on and it was beginning to drive him out of his mind. He would sell his soul to _know_ for sure that he saw an echo of his own feelings somewhere in the depths of those captivating blue eyes. If only he had something solid he could hang his hopes on…

And when it came, that day, it almost _killed_ Harry… the cruellest day of his young life, when his blissfully oblivious redhead carelessly offered to relieve his cramped muscles and let his hopes soar into the sky... Left breathless at the suggestion, he felt like it’s has been centuries before his best mate returned into the room and just lingered there at the door as if uncertain, looking every bit like sin personified, gently biting into his lower lip. And in the end he did not disappoint him. He finally moved slowly towards him and Harry’s heart went on a rampage. When he slid on a sofa next to him, Harry felt all his blood leaving his brain behind and going to all the wrong places, pumping with violent passion through his veins, pulsating in his cock with a vengeance of frustrated years.

And when those blue eyes finally locked in with his gaze, he saw it all; he felt his heart all but explode. For in those deep blue eyes held a clear reflection of his own desire, his slow gentle touches spoke of that same raw desperate need that plagued him to no end and he almost fell of the edge of sanity when Ron just _wouldn’t stop_ and insteadtook control as he did in so many of his forbidden fantasies… His fingers felt like heaven, feeding Harry’s obsession to the breaking point, building his expectations to the point of pain - so when Ron did stop, though not by choice, just knowing that he’d come so close to making his dreams come true drove Harry off the cliff and into the wilderness beyond that always dwelled somewhere in his mind.

When he sat absolutely wrecked and sobbing in the ravaged living room of Ron’s apartment, he thought he finally lost it all and he just wanted to crawl inside himself and die. To this day he didn’t know how he made it through those weeks to his wedding. He felt as if he had sunk to the bottom of a big barrel of pain, all his actions on auto-pilot and his only gasps of breath coming from stolen glances at his pale best man-to-be, looking just as miserable as he was. And he couldn’t hold himself back when they went to select the rings, he had to let Ron know just how deeply he was cutting him.

But once again, the tide had changed, and this time the most wonderful and most unexpected shift of events was brought on by his gorgeous object of affection. Just before all was lost, Ron took actions into his own hands and as little as he did, as unclear as his motives were, it was enough for Harry.

The night before his wedding, his stag night… 


	10. Harry: Seduced

Harry knew it was coming, but he had no idea what to expect of it and frankly, he was too deeply submerged into his depression to care. As far as he was concerned, it was just another night of drinking and then it was game over. Best get on with it and get it over with. So when he came to pick Ron up, the sight of his best friend, looking like he just stepped out of a  fashion magazine for men, hit him over the head like a sledge hammer.

Gone were the faded jeans and the scattered Chuddley cannons t-shirts, the man in front of him sported black leather trousers he had more than enough muscles to pull off _perfectly_ and a silk electric blue shirt, almost glued onto the muscular chest and casually hanging over the narrow hips, barely closed. It shockingly brought out the blue if his eyes and Harry felt a lump form in his throat when his eyes got caught on a thin silver necklace with a lion pendant, Harry’s present, quietly disappearing into the darkness between the soft fabric and the pale skin. His silken fiery hair, caught in a loose ponytail, shone like molten lava, emitting a faint smell of shampoo and looking so warm that Harry wanted to sink his fingers right into them let himself melt. If he could only remember how to breathe.

And then Ron smiled, one of his undoing soft smiles that always got Harry’s heart exploding in fireworks, looked from his impressive height straight into his eyes and asked simply: “Coming?” He tilted his head just a little as if wanting to make it inviting and Harry’s knees almost buckled at this shy attempt at flirting. When Harry nodded, breathless and stunned, Ron casually put his arm around his shoulders, submerging him into all that fantastic warmth and scent and it was all Harry could do not to snog him senseless, when he whispered in his ear: “Come on, precious, let’s paint this town red tonight!”

He knew not, where they took him that night, could only barely remember being loudly cheered by his mates and served too many glasses of butterbeer and later firewhiskey… All he cared about was the intoxicating presence of his best mate, whose goal for the night was clearly to embody every sexual fantasy Harry has ever had. Ron’s eyes blazed like blue flames, their charge so intense and provoking, that even George felt compelled to quietly warn his little brother:

“Careful there, Ronnie, you don’t want to start a fire you can’t put out…”

But the redhead just looked at him defiantly, as if nothing mattered when his hand casually rubbed Harry’s shoulder and said with a quiet tense voice: “Too late, brother dear, this fire is already out of control…”

He never left Harry’s side as if he wanted to make a point to whom this night belongs to and Harry felt himself sinking quietly and helplessly into his aphrodisiac smell, a subtle mixture of soap, freshly washed hair and leather. And Ron let himself off the leash entirely that night, downing his drink with abundance, more or less successfully licking the small streams trying escape from the corner of his generous mouth, or having them run down his long neck into the confines of the shirt; joking and laughing to no end and of course, flirting with everything on two feet, but never letting Harry move away more than an arms length. Harry was completely swallowed by his own little hell of arousal and intoxication he wouldn’t give up for the world. Too much alcohol, too much Ron… he felt like his all existence was about this night and the man by his side, purring words in his ear. He knew he cannot emerge on the other side unharmed, but he was past caring.

They had dragged him to yet another bar, a Muggle one this time and somewhere with a corner of an eye he thought he caught a sight of a very alarmed looking Malfoy with Pansy Parkinson hanging around his neck. The atmosphere was dark, almost gothic, and there was an abundance of blinking colourful lights casting bizarre shadows; the music heavy and pumping with a beat too loud and of course there was a stripper ready for him. A well-endowed exotic dancer came to sit on his lap, trying to look seductive, moving temptingly in the rhythm of the music.

“No touching,” she whispered in his ear and it felt ridiculously in contrast with the inviting moves she was making. But then a familiar redhead figure came into view and Ron whispered something in her ear. She smiled and said: “You have generous friends, you’re free to do as you like…”

Harry couldn’t have cared less for the girl, this one couldn’t hold a candle to Ginny at the best of her times, but his eyes were locked on Ron and his best mate smiled as if he was challenging him, sexy and slow, and Harry could almost hear him in what was left of his hazy mind: “Let’s see what you’ve got, Potter!”

He was just drunk enough to forget that there were other mates present, this was for Ron and he was going to make sure he was enjoying the show.

So he cupped the girl’s face in his hands and tilted her head backwards to play with the soft skin on her neck and when he felt her breath hitch and heard the catcalls he knew he was winning this round. He never closed his eyes, never took them off his best mate, making sure Ron saw every gentle move he made, letting him know that every lick and suck and love-bite he did was for him. He never went lower than her neck, even though by the time he was done with playing around with her neck she practically tried to smother him with her breasts.

Instead he turned her around not worrying about disguising his erection, knowing full well everyone would chalk it up to the girl in his lap. He cupped her breasts gently, generating a right moan and a bunch of loud whistles and when he looked at Ron hard he slipped a smile almost beatifically: the look in his best mate’s lust-darkened eyes was nothing short of predatory.

So he went to work on opening her bra – with his teeth! - against the background of loud cheers, his body flushed with a feeling of victory of having Ron right where he wanted him so close to hand...when he casually lift his eyes to check on him - and almost froze to the spot: Ron had his eyes set directly at him, slowly opening his shirt, button by button, revealing inch after inch of marble white skin sprayed with galaxies of golden freckles covering the most perfect set of muscles Harry’s ever seen on a living being. Just a faint line of ginger hair parted the virgin-snow landscape of his skin down the middle, disappearing into the leather pants so low-cut they did nothing to hide how hard he was. He stopped for a fraction when he popped the last button, as if unsure if he wants to make the last move, and then let the silken fabric slide of his shoulders. He caught the shirt with his fists and his gaze focused on his large skilful hands tying it around his waist, effectively hiding the bulge between his legs with the long sleeves. Then he lifted his stormy eyes up once more and smiled at Harry darkly.

Harry found out he couldn’t go on. Unable to take eyes off the main prize of the evening he slapped the girl’s butt to make her understand that this was as far as he was willing to go and simply continued to stare at Ron, with nothing between them once the disappointed dancer was gone. His mind has finally melted, he didn’t have a thought to spare, his eyes worshiping every inch of that diabolical body that plagued his dreams ever since he was a teenager. George was the first to follow his gaze and hissed in alarm: “Ron! What the fuck are you doing?!”

“ _I_ …am taking Harry to dance, brother dear… He seems to be finished here,” Ron said without removing the predatory gaze that held Harry prisoner and not even bothering to sound apologetic. He grabbed Harry by the wrist mercilessly and pulled him to his feet. He threw a casual “You can join us, if you like!” at his petrified brother over his shoulder and dragged Harry into a mêlée of tightly packed bodies writhing in the sound of deep bass rhythm.

Harry vaguely saw George roll his eyes up and sigh and then heard him call for _“free drinks for everyone!_ ”, effectively masking their disappearance with a loud roar of cheers that erupted. He saw himself slide past shell-shocked Malfoy with his mouth all but gaping at the pair of them and then he was in the middle of the crowd, pressed tightly at the body of the one person in the whole world that could make him forget his name.

Ron turned to face him and locked his darkened blue eyes with his and the outside world ceased to exist. It was just them and the magic between them was so powerful that there were sparks flying where their bodies rubbed against each other. Lights around them went on full rampage, blinking madly, creating crazy psychedelic effects and Ron lifted his arms above his head in dancing, as if he wanted to focus the lights entirely on his decadent body. He tilted his head back slightly, looking every bit like a pagan god of the elder days, and whispered a spell Harry never heard before.

Suddenly the rest of the crowd seemed to have drowned in some sort of haze and Harry’s eyes finally closed when he felt Ron’s hands descend on his shoulders and slowly slide down his body. He could not take anymore, he would die here. He felt his divine hands all over him, rubbing his muscles, soaking his skin with his “Ron” scent that was making him shiver and want to beg for more and then the strand of long fiery hair swept past his ear and he smelled the liquor on Ron’s hot breath as he leaned forward and whispered in a needy almost throaty voice: “You turn me on like a motherfucking bitch in heat, Potter… I want to make you come so bad, love…”

At this point Harry was sure he had moaned loudly but he couldn’t have cared even if he was yelling from the church tower. Ron was making him come in his pants and he hasn’t even kissed him yet. When large hands cupped his arse and rubbed his body gently at his thigh, Harry finally let his head fall backward and forgot about the world. Turned on to the point of madness he became one with that wonderful man that was teasing the ecstasy out of him so expertly that he couldn’t stop himself from yelping and begging for _moremoremore … ohmyfuckinggodron…ohdontyoudarefuckingstop_ , until he was finally allowed to scream his release with his name on the lips… straight into Ron’s mouth who was now kissing him for dear life right in the middle of the dance floor.

His orgasm was so long-coming and so powerful he felt he must have lost consciousness for a few moments there before he realized that his full weight was softly rocked in the arms of a gorgeous ginger that was going to be food for his fantasies until he draw breath. Ron just looked at him and smiled softly before releasing him onto his unsteady feet and asked quietly: “All right there, Harry?”

Harry had no time to say yes or no, as suddenly they were surrounded by a crowd of their mates, led by a furious George. “Where did you just go, Harry?” he heard Neville ask in confusion. “One minute we could see you and another there was just a blur!”

But he couldn’t bother to answer as his attention was fully focused on Ron’s brother, absolutely livid, hissing at his ginger best mate: 

“What the fuck just happened, Ron?! I’d recognize Fred’s disillusionment charm anywhere; you bastard, what the hell are you playing at?! Sweet Merlin, if you’re planning to hurt Ginny, you were born into the wrong family, you prick! I’m going to feed you your own balls, little brother, if Harry’s not there for the wedding tomorrow! For fuck’s sake, Ron… I know you love him, Fred and I have always known, even before it got through your thick head, but for god’s sake, couldn’t you be a bit more discrete?! You practically fucked him with your eyes just there and Godric only know what else have you done to him under that charm!”

Harry saw Ron grow sober right in front of his eyes and when he ran his long fingers distractedly over the loose strands of his hair, he closed his heavenly eyes and whispered: “Shit, George… I just fucked up royally… I just… ”

“Never mind,” said George, sounding half annoyed half in pity that he has to be the one to introduce Ron to the harsh reality. “Just fix it! Apologise and make sure Harry’s there for the wedding tomorrow.” When he saw the look in Ron’s eyes grow defiant, he grabbed the shoulders of his taller brother and spoke to him in an almost pleading voice: “Do it for him, Ron, if you won’t do it for Ginny. This might be his only chance to lead a normal life, have a proper family, don’t blow it for him. You don’t know what this is, it might be just passion, just some steam that needs to be let off and what he has with Ginny is good… please, Ronnie… you know mum will serve _you_ for dinner in five different plates if Harry’s not there tomorrow…”

“All right then, George!” hissed Ron barely on the brink of sobriety. “I’ll do it for him, I’ll do it for all your sakes! I just wanted to have something for myself for once, not used and broken and mended, something fresh and clean and _of my own_ , get it?! Harry was _my_ friend first, he belongs to _me_ , he should be mine, he should have been… “ his voice died away in a voice so lost and sad that George’s hands slid of his shoulders in surrender and he looked utterly at a loss for words in the face of such despair.

But Ron had already turned towards Harry and repeated what was clearly their family charm. Once again they were surrounded by a haze, just the two of them and a very startled looking George. Harry closed his eyes, willing his mind to go numb, not wanting to hear the words that were coming, not wanting to hear that Ron was sorry for what he did to him, cause he knew _he_ was not and Ron shouldn’t be either… it was the single most precious gift his beloved redhead could have given him at this turning point in life and “sorry” was all wrong, it was just _wrong_!

But even with his eyes closed he could still hear his voice and he opened his eyes for him, to remember those moments when he stared in the face of love, perhaps for the last time. And there was no apology in Ron’s voice and none in those sea-blue eyes that he came to worship.

“I can’t apologize, Harry,” Ron said simply and touched his face with his fingers as if trying to remember his features. “I can’t and I won’t, because I’m not sorry. But I will ask you to be there tomorrow for my sister, to at least make her dreams come true, as so many never will.”

Harry felt like he was on the verge of crying, so he simply nodded unable to look away from the love of his life saying goodbye.

It felt like Ron’s blue eyes were kissing him, the two young men an island of their own amidst the crowd, and then Ron caught Harry’s right hand between his big palms and put it flat in the middle of his warm chest, right above his heart.

“Yours... always,” he said simply and Harry’s tears spilled unabashedly, for what was probably the first time in his life. God, he was too drunk to do this, his heart was too tortured, it shouldn’t be here, he shouldn’t be crying… But then with unrelenting gaze Ron’s big hand came to rest on top of Harry’s rapidly beating heart, so hot to the touch as if trying to melt into his chest and Ron added softly: “Mine… yeah?” Not a question, just a statement, that didn’t really need any confirmation, but still Harry found he had to let him know how very right he was. Just that he could find no words and he just put his left hand over the big palm of his one and only and pressed it on his chest as if he wanted him to touch it, to take that heart, beating for him.

“Always,” he managed a whisper and then they stood there, a fragment stolen from eternity, until George softly pulled on Ron’s elbow, unaware of the traces of tears on his own face and asked pleadingly: “Ronnie… it’s time to go…”

Ron nodded absently as if he was too empty to put up a fight and when his warm hand left Harry, the boy who lived shivered as if someone just walked over his grave. The charm dissolved and his clearly confused mates came into view again.

“Ron! “ he called after him, unable to let go just yet. But the lovely ginger wouldn’t turn around, so he called harder: “Ron!” Finally the redhead gave in and stopped in his track.

“I’ll be there tomorrow,” Harry said fiercely. “I’ll be there. For you.”

He needed him to know that, he wanted him to understand that it was not over yet. It couldn’t be. His gorgeous best mate has just given him exactly what he needed to remember who he was: Harry bloody Potter, the boy who died and came back to beat the darkest motherfucker of all times and damn him to hell and back, if he wasn’t going to get this one thing he wanted above all, this person that made him feel complete. What little Ron shared with him that night made him realize that he’ll never be free of him, never be happy without him and that somehow he had to find a way to make his breath-taking ginger own up to what he kept stirring between them.

He knew it wasn’t going to be easy – after all, everything was always about blood, sweat and tears when it came to Harry. But he wasn’t going to spend his life wondering how it would be to have the right Weasley by his side, he was going to get there, get him, even if it left their whole lives in wrecks. He was Harry, his mother’s son and she’s done it all for love.


	11. Harry: Man on a mission

So he showed up at the wedding the next day, not only sober but as dashing as he could muster. Ginny deserved it, Molly did for all she ever did for him, but above all – because this is what Ron was paying for with his happiness, with his heart. So he smiled blissfully to the camera, for once all set up to embody a legend he has become, he said all the right words and did all the right things to make Ginny glow and Molly cry and the only thing that mattered was an ashen pale Ron that passed him in a hallway and brushed at his hand in the passing, with a quiet “thank you”.

In spite of a perpetual smile plastered to his face, Ron looked every bit drained of his feelings as if nothing was left under his beautiful marble surface. But he stood the part of the best man, strong and upright next to Hermione with strangely red and puffy eyes. And George… George looked absolutely dishevelled, looking from Hermione, to Ron and again to Harry, as if all the time on the verge of saying something. And when Harry said his “I do” George's face was in his hands and his shoulders shook with quiet sobbing as if he just committed an unforgivable crime.

But Harry was not suffering. Harry had a plan. He had finally figured how to get what he wanted and the time was now. If he was this adamant and so brutal years ago, none of this would have happened. Lying, cheating, anything, he was prepared to do _anything_ that will get him his man. Because that’s what Hermione had done all those years ago, hadn’t she and it worked like a charm!

Harry didn’t know why he was so certain that Hermione fooled Ron into marrying her, but he was. As perceptive as she was, she must have noticed that once the Dark Lord was gone, Harry was finally about to do something regarding his years-long infatuation with Ron – Merlin knows he was hardly discreet, gaping at him as he did! – and she was smart enough to make the first move.

And she went and stole Ron from him _knowing_ how ravaged that was going to leave him - it was in her slightly guilty expression every time she caught him staring at her husband, it was in her unrelenting kindness and the lack of questioning of his often irrational behaviour. She might have fooled Ron with her pregnancy, he certainly was trusting and naïve enough, but Harry grew up in a Muggle world, he knew there was other kind of protection around not just magical. Unexpected pregnancy, his arse! She knew full well what she was doing and he knew she was certainly not beyond cheating. After all, she had cheated when she wanted her teeth to grow back more perfect; she had cheated when she wanted Ron on the Quidditch team instead of McLaggen and Harry was sure, she pulled one on Ron as well. As righteous as she always was, she was right down unscrupulous when she really wanted something. And Ron was always at the top of her list of priorities.

Not that he could really blame her, after all – all was sacred in love and war, if he said so himself. But Harry developed a whole new appreciation for her skills along with alertness, not to underestimate her as an opponent. Because he was determined he was ready for a rematch and with Ron going back to school, the game was on.

In the days that followed his wedding Harry had plenty of time to devise his plan. He had to talk to Ron. He knew if he was only given a chance to talk to him in private and spill his thoughts, his feelings as he never did before, Ron would not have the heart to abandon him once more. Harry knew that much. He had that much power over Ron and he was not afraid to use it.

But first he had to break through Ron’s obstinacy – and he was the first to admit that he had largely underestimated _that_ feature of Molly Weasley’s son. The redhead was clearly determined that everything has been said between them and nothing would cut through the illusion of happiness they’ve both worked so hard to create. Clearly unsure of his self-control, made sure never to face Harry outside the safe company of his wife or his sister again and it was beginning to make Harry desperate. Four weeks - two of those lost in a honeymoon - and he hasn’t managed to corner his best mate alone for once! If it wasn’t so infuriating, Harry might find it actually amusing how resourceful an expert strategist such as Ron could be. But it _was_ infuriating and it _was_ childish and so very _Ron_ in its innocent way, because it was after all, a lost cause: in the end, he won’t be able to avoid him forever, will he?

So that wasn’t going so well, but Harry wasn’t giving up. He made other moves as well. He knew his wandless magic has improved beyond admirable by that point and since it was common knowledge that with some people, people like himself, magic tended to be quite unpredictable when they were agitated or somehow off, his stunt was relatively easy. All he needed to do, was to make things _happen_ \- sometimes just short of dangerous - every time Ginny was around, scaring her and others, until he had her right where he wanted her. Assuming a role of a worried husband, he insisted that it was not safe for her to go back to school and hang about students with _her_ magic going as haywire as it did and with Molly pestering her about the baby’s safety it was an easy deal to persuade her to give it up for a year.

Next was convincing Kingsley that McGonagall was really in a jam with such a late cancellation at Hogwarts, the Defence against the dark arts was too much of an important class to let the future generation of witches and wizards pass out on it and besides – didn’t the Ministry always encourage self-promotion and what better promotion could it get than having one of the most prominent employees giving the students some highly appreciated hands-on experience? He shouldn’t have bothered, really. Once Kingsley learnt he was eager to take a year-long break from his Auror post, he was more than willing to oblige. He was secretly worried about the tireless work of the young prodigy, fearing that he would soon burn out if he continued with the same monstrous pace.

And Mc Gonagall was a piece of cake. She was beside herself when Ginny called to cancel the notorious post of a Defence against the dark arts professor and when Harry offered to replace her, it was obvious that having Harry on the staff was clearly one of her unfulfilled dreams coming to life as she was clearly excited beyond her usual composed self.

Harry made sure it all took place on a very short notice, making the best of a week-long symposium for Ministry employees that took place on the continent, simply by arranging for Hermione to be the speaker and guest of honour and importantly - not returning to England before the beginning of term at Hogwarts. Somewhere under his dead-set determination Harry was profoundly ashamed and sorry that this was the way it had to be, but if there was one person that could stop his plan from happening, it was Hermione and he was not having it. Not this time. He will have his year to work on Ron’s determination and feelings and once the waves were in the motion even Hermione won’t be able to stop the things from falling into their rightful place.

So when Harry kissed his wife goodbye this morning, he knew that it would all come down to those first few moments after he would find himself face to face with Ron. He knew he could not conceal his true intentions from him - though sometimes oblivious, Ron was anything but daft - but if Ron panicked and flat out refused to give him a chance at this – whatever this was between them – then... well, Harry was not prepared to think about that. He knew he could not take Ron’s refusal one more time; he would surely break and did something unforgivable. He needed Ron to understand so badly...

So right before he disapparated from his flat, he closed his eyes and prayed to any Supreme Being that might be paying attention: please let this be it, let Ron at least give them a chance...

And before he knew it, he felt the familiar tug which always accompanied disapparating and he found himself in the middle of the gasping crowd of Hogwarts students. But he only looked for one face and he didn’t have to look far. He was there, in the first row, all long powerful limbs, beautiful freckled face with those stunning eyes and the familiar ginger head leaning on his elbow. Harry locked eyes with his best mate, wishing with all his might that for once his glittering green eyes would work their magic on Ron, and watched the first signs of shock register on his beloved face. His heart was beating on empty when he whispered his _“Surprise!”_ , waiting for his reaction for the longest moment.... and then Ron smiled, one of his blissful undoing smiles of absolute happiness and Harry’s heart went on a rampage. He won; he would be given his chance! He knew he only overcame the first obstacle on a long road to win Ron’s heart, but Ron left the door open for him and that was enough.

 There was only so much he could do not to snog him right in front of all those people, so he turned around quickly with his heart in his throat, unable to keep a small sigh to himself “ _Ron...just… wow..._ ”. No one noticed. No one, but a slender youth with silver eyes. Draco Malfoy’s eyes spoke murder.


	12. Draco, enchanted

_“Just a whisper that scars, just a smile that burns_

_you're a glance unreturned, you're poison, you're danger,_

_love personified.”_

_No,no,no,no,no,no_ …. _no!_ Draco felt his mind whisper in panic, as he stared at the big ginger wildcat by the name of Weasley cosily stretching his long limbs on the lawn of Hogwarts, which, accidentally, he was supposed to attend this year as well. Talk about an _accident_ , indeed! He could not do that with Weasley around, no way in Salazaar’s hell! Merlin’s bloody balls, he didn’t think he could resent his father for making him do this _more_ and – surprise, he just found out he could! It was absurd to make him go back to school in the first place for his _education_ (of all things!)– and to _this_ school, a place of their demise, when there were other, more exotic establishments to choose from! But having to deal with Ron Weasley and his… attributes at the same time; _that_ was almost unbearable, unacceptable, really!

Perhaps he should consider talking to his mother about going to Durmstrang, he thought desperately, as he watched Weasley’s freckled face follow the sun, golden eyelashes closed over those startling ocean-blue eyes, smiling at some internal reverie. Durmstrang suddenly seemed like an immensely attractive option, though the snow and the cold and the harsh discipline… well, maybe not _Durmstrang_ , but surely there were other places he could attend!

He really couldn’t…. Oh, wait, he’s going to open his eyes now, oh, why on Merlin’s bloody earth did he put him in a shade and draw his attention and…  ohmyfuckinggod, he’s ever more _gorgeous_ than he ever was! Draco felt his strength run into the ground as he stood there growing roots, gaping at his childhood nemesis and hopeless crush for too many damn years. And then Weasley _smiled_ at him and spoke… something, Draco couldn’t repeat, because the rest of his brain has been successfully demolished by that deadly smile.

He’s never smiled at him before! Of course he’s seen him smile, plenty of time, he liked to do that at other people, mostly at his beloved Potty, but he’s never been on the receiving end of it and it kind of put Draco in a disorienting haze. Surely smiles like this should be banned, or charged for… Did Weasley ever consider getting a lethal weapon licence for that smile?! Because it sure as hell _could_ kill, the breath frozen in his chest was a solid proof of that…

What saved Draco from completely humiliating himself was the fact that he didn’t get the full force of that smile – it stopped somewhere half way to the blond youth as Ron realized who was staring at him. He saw disbelief in his eyes and anger in his voice when he spoke his name with an attitude. He knew he was staring, which was _anything_ but good manners, but couldn’t look away once those damn stormy eyes were on him. But the redhead was already hissing something about “ _not breaking his eyes_ ” and trying to get away and that should be perfect really, because then Draco could finally go and look for the rest of his brain, but somehow his stupid half-witted mind went all bonkers and decided on a different kind of action…

Before he knew it, his cold hand was on the redhead’s warm wrist, just on top of his pulse, and he was pulling him up on his feet. Which was as crazy as it was ridiculous, really, because the ginger bear out-weighed him by a stone and once at full height, he towered over Draco impressively, though the blond was always proud at his tall lean figure.

And then those enchanting blue eyes were just an inch from him and that generous mouth had to breathe warmth and freshness and _all_ of that blasted Weasley simply radiated heat and, oh _god_ , all that incredible scent that was nothing but pure sex personified - and something in Draco responded so violently, he shivered. Which was good, right? Because Weasley finally pulled his wrist out of his grasp and turned around, clearly agitated.

“Weasley,” he managed, sounding coarse to himself and feeling like an utter bloody fool. Like the man didn’t know his name! That’s it?! That’s what all the proverbial Malfoy intelligence and eloquence comes down to, when one really needs it!? Gods, was he ever so _stupid!_

Beyond miserable he stood there for a moment longer and closed his eyes in a hopeless attempt to regain his wits about. Slowly he emerged from his dishevelled state of mind – what was it with that bloody Weasel that always threw him out of balance so?! – and anger began to surge his veins instead. So he was stuck with Weasley, so what?! Just a cheap-arse blood traitor with nothing but a Mudblood wife and a bunch of brats to his name! And of course, let’s not forget holy Potter, clearly so smitten by his best mate that he all but let himself be fucked by him in the middle of the dance floor, _on the night before his wedding_ , to top it all!

Yes, he’s seen them all right, he had wandered to that blasted club with Pansy to get away from the wizarding world for a night, from all the staring and the “I can’t _possibly_ care about what you think” show he was due to perform every time he as much as showed his nose in public.

And instead of enjoying his much desired anonymity, he was suddenly surrounded by more wizards than he could have possibly encountered in the middle of the day in Hogsmead! And right in the middle of an unwelcome crowd, it was _him_. No, not Potter – really, what was it with people assuming that he’d _ever_ fall for a scrawny half-blood!? – _him_ , Ron Weasley, the sexiest man on the planet, a whole six-and-a-half foot of pure blood and Draco’s material for tossing since he was but a growing boy. And talk about a boy – Weasley sure was one no more!

Gone was the bony scarecrow with overgrown limbs, shabby clothes and awkward demeanour, the man in front of him was a tower of pure muscle that could have posed for Witch’s Weekly centrefold - holiday edition! You couldn’t miss him from another continent: silky fiery hair, caught in a loose ponytail that probably took three seconds to make and yet managed to look incredibly stylish, those unfathomable blue eyes that one could get lost in and milky white skin with constellations of freckles that made him look younger and unassuming…  And there was confidence in his long stretched posture. And power beyond words sparkled in those striking eyes, power beyond magic. And, oh, boy, was Draco ever so turned on by power...

Draco forgot about Pansy hanging on his arm, forgot about putting up appearance, he was just _gaping_ openly, when he saw Weasley stare provokingly at Potter and the little stripping slut in his lap... and then began removing his shirt… Draco’s breath hitched at the mere memory of it, that pale skin, with its own glow under the lights, emerging from the electric blue silk of his shirt, the lean long muscles moving temptingly underneath as he was tying the sleeves in a knot, the _look_ in his eyes when he lift his challenging blue gaze and looked at Potter hard. A _predator_. If there ever was one. And Potter was prey. He stared behind them helplessly as Ron stormed past him without ever noticing him, dragging Potter behind, clearly drunk and looking positively mesmerized.

Draco’s mouth went dry and he was suddenly impossibly hard and hopelessly wishing he was in Potter’s place. He saw Ron rock his body in rhythm against Potter and together they moved like a force of nature. A few moments later Ron had his bare arms above his head like two power-charged snakes ready to strike, staring at Potter like an obscenely beautiful pagan god and he saw Potter close his eyes in the over-dose of emotion right before the spell hit. He knew what was most likely happening under that haze and it made him want to scream in frustration. Potter was being finished off and Draco wanted to watch, to torture himself to completion. Half-crazed with desire he squeezed his eyes shut trying not to see the rest, to gain some composure, to wipe his mind clean from an over-load of imagination. What good would it do to see it, if it wasn’t for him?

The memory of that night still haunted him. He let himself be dragged to Pansy’s apartment for what turned out to be a night of debauchery as he couldn’t get the images of that cursed powerful body out of his mind, fucking Pansy into oblivion and screaming his name as he was coming with his eyes closed, with the image of this obscenely beautiful young man still clearly imprinted on his brain. He had to obliviate the bitch in the end, as she was trying to blackmail him into dating her with what she got on him that night.

And now he was in his presence again, powerless to resist and fuming on the inside. What was it about that motherfucking – sorry mother! – Weasley, that always undid him to the point of yearning?! Malfoys didn’t bloody _yearn_ and yet he was staring at the overwhelming redhead like love-sick puppy. Of course it wasn’t love, what a ridiculous notion; it was lust, pure unabashed hormone-induced frenzy at a sight of a perfect male specimen, but still... It had to be _something_ about that damn ginger, some old pureblood magic or something – whatever to give Draco an excuse to feel so discomposed in his presence... 

And it wasn’t just him, was it? The brightest witch in England was falling all over herself to win his attention and his heart and rich and powerful Potter – as much as it pained him to admit it, holy Potty was both – couldn’t keep his eyes (and lately his hands either, as it seemed) of that blasted poor undeserving Weasley, with nothing going for him but a spotless pedigree which Potter couldn’t care less about! And yet, every time his hot-headed best mate let him down – and he did, more than once, as the word went – Potter couldn’t forgive him fast enough and embrace him once again.

Yes, it had to be something else about Ron, probably something to do with his long-line of pureblood ancestors, some old love magic passed down the heritage or something, no wonder his shabby parents had such a big litter of kids.... Maybe he could ask his mother discretely if there even was such a thing... Draco shuddered at the very thought of such a conversation:

_“Mother, I wonder... is there a spell for making someone in love?” “_

_Draco, dear, of course there is that unreliable potion as you are well aware, but if you’re referring to something more long-term... I’m not really sure, I would have to consult your father about that... But darling – why on Earth would you be interested in a thing like that?! Surely, you don’t need it... oh, but… do you?!”_

_“_ _Oh, no, of course not, mother, don’t be ridiculous, it’s nothing, really, just some healthy curiosity... and a small matter of a life-long infatuation with a certain Weasley... one of the male representatives of that shameless lot, to be precise...”_

No, he couldn’t _really_ talk to his mother, but wouldn’t it be convenient if it actually _was_ some kind of magic, because then it wouldn’t be his fault, would it!? He would be the helpless victim here and maybe if he just stayed away, he would not be affected and things would be back to _normal_. Normal, as in mentally collapsing every time he saw a hint of ginger hair and hopelessly melting whenever he was within five feet of that goddamn Weasley radiance. For Merlin’s sake since that club scene he’s hardly thought of anyone else and to be honest, his wanking sessions were all about his mind playing a track from “ _1001 way to fuck your favourite ginger_ ” ever since that first blasted kiss a million years ago!


	13. Draco's kiss of doom

Draco’s long fingers slipped through his soft blond hair, caught in a flawless plait running down his back and barely held back a sigh at the thought of _that_ kiss. This was when it all started, the dreams, the yearning, the lust, the sleepless nights plagued with unforgivable images of that long lithe body wrapped around his – all of it because of that godforsaken kiss! If he only had the brain to stay away that day, he was sure he would have been happily engaged with a suitable young lady by now, maybe well on his way of extending the Malfoy line... but it happened in it had ruined everything for him, every other kiss, every other attempt at intimacy, nothing ever came close to that moment of perfection when that soft fresh mouth sought him out and closed above him.

He remembered it with such clarity… way too much clarity for comfort... He remembered standing there in the corridor, feeling abandoned as soon as those warm soft lips left him and Ron moved away… then a sense of shame kicked in and he was flushed with a sudden humiliation and acute awareness of just how turned-on he was…. He had the presence of mind to set his fellow Slytherins after him, to at least uphold an image of animosity - but how he wondered back to his dorm, he had no memory of.

He found himself lying on his bed, eyes closed under the sensory overload of memories… of his presence, his soft mouth, his strong hand sliding down his back, bringing them closer. Barely conscious of his actions, his hand slid down his pants and he was hard and ready, oh, so ready for him… that eager soft lips commanding his cooperation, the wetness of his gentle tongue, that intimate warmth and oh, that incredible scent of summer delights, sweet and innocent and… his body buckled involuntarily and Draco Malfoy came hard and helpless to hold back a yelp “Ron!”

God, his world must have ended … how could he have done… that… thinking of Ron Weasley?! He had never wanked in a broad daylight before, he would always just wake up hard or wet in the middle of the night after a dream he couldn’t remember… but this was different. His mind was focused on this one image, the shock of golden-red hair, the ocean-blue eyes hypnotising him, the soft lips leading him into a universe of delight - and his body responded so violently, he was left shivering.

He was cursed after that. He hated Weasley for making him so wild and weak – and he wanted him hopelessly and desperately. He combined both by seeking his attention with every vile act he could think of just to see those fuming blue eyes take him in and he knew he created yet another memory for his private stash of late night reveries he was addicted to. No one else would do. For the longest time he wouldn’t even have anyone touch him, because this… him… was just too precious, how could anyone live up to his expectations?

But once he found himself staring at two dull summer months where he knew there was no chance in hell he would ever see the lovely ginger, he desperately launched himself at the other extreme and began fucking anyone that crossed his path, much to the amusement of his father who couldn’t be prouder of his son’s evident insatiable libido. As for Draco, having sex helped him release tension of his raging hormones, but did nothing for bringing back the sense of belonging and bliss he felt in Ron’s presence.

As it was, his sexual escapades were only to last until the end of summer – as soon as he saw flaming hair approaching the Hogwarts Express, he let go of the hand of his latest female target as if he got scorched. One look at the long legs filling the threadbare jeans, exposed arms grown surprisingly muscular in the summer and piercing blue eyes, reflecting sunshine - and he was once again doomed. Just brushing against a girl he was set to conquer suddenly felt like cheating and he knew for certain that as long as Ron Weasley was around, there was no other for him. So it was back to elaborate plans to get his attention and to endless private wanking sessions he wasn’t willing to trade for any other real thing.  

Fucking Merlin, he was so screwed… even after all these years, the memory of that single kiss got his bones melting and he really couldn’t have that, not on the Hogwarts ground with the million kids around and with the class starting shortly and Weasley’s tall figure still in view... oh, by the tangled mess of Salazaar’s beard, how _is_ he ever going to go through this day, let alone a whole year!

Well, best get on with it, pull yourself up, Malfoy, put some grace in that step and walk, that’s right... you’re not going to care about the silence... and the whisper... and that redhead in the first row looking straight at you with those mesmerizing eyes... just keep on walking and don’t you _dare_ sit too close to him! That’s right, the other side of the classroom will be perfect, well done, Malfoy!

Draco was about to mentally congratulate himself on a pitch-perfect Malfoyian performance, when he turned around and once again found himself directly at the mercy of the blue gaze. Apparently putting a whole circle of space reserved for professor in a less than spacious class meant putting a mere distance of 10 feet between the object of his affection and himself. Which wasn’t enough. Which was _nowhere in hell_ near enough, not if Weasley continued to glare his way with his stormy predatory look that Draco found so alarmingly arousing.   

He tried to distract himself by going over the schedule – oh, no, not his _sister_ , what is this, Weaselby family reunion at Hogwarts!? With this rate he’ll be lucky if the ghost of that hapless Fred Weasley doesn’t show up for the party! Honestly, he could hardly imagine things taking a worse turn!

And of course, he jinxed it! He didn’t even finish his brooding over his ill fate in this misery of a school year when a soft pop announced the arrival of their first teacher. And this is where Draco Malfoy’s mind really turned to _murder_.

Instead of the trademark red hair of the Weaslette appearing in their midst there was a scrawny figure of his Royal Highness himself, yes, ladies and gentlemen, the cavalry has arrived, bloody freaking Potter was here, the mighty Auror robes and all, looking all smug against the cacophony screams and whispers of his worshippers. And his legendary green eyes only looked for one person, one man, and when he found him, his whole face lit up and his whole body tensed if only for the slightest of moments.

He saw Potter whisper something Ron’s way, but couldn’t see what from where he was sitting, he could only helplessly observe the effect. He saw shock register in those ocean-blue eyes, but then after a moment of briefest hesitation the beautiful freckled face literally exploded in a brilliant breath-taking smile. He could almost _see_ Potter’s heart stop in his chest and he knew _exactly_ how he felt. The raven-haired wizard froze to a spot as if he’s been hit by a spell, then a moment later abruptly turned around as if desperately trying to mask his feelings and this time Draco could see his stunning green eyes. They were a-blaze with obsessive love and when he read his whisper _“Ron... just… wow...”_ \- this was when Draco Malfoy finally saw red.


	14. Harry: The game is on...

_"Pull me under Pull me under  
Pull me under I'm not afraid ...”_

Pull me under, Dream Theatre

Nothing could stop Harry, once he’s seen that smile. It broke him down to bits and built him up to new heights all at once. His Ron wanted him, he wanted _this_ , he wanted to be here alone with him, wanted to at least give them a chance! No one could stop him now, he is going to nail this; this is so going to be _perfect!_ Riding the winds of his elation he looked around the classroom energetically, noticing for the first time how stricken the crowd in the classroom appeared at the sight of him.

As soon as the students noticed that the famous wizard’s eyes were on them, the giggling of girls subsided and the boys sit up straight. Harry let a tiny smile slip, he knew he held authority in his reputation, in his posture and in the black robes of Auror and he was not afraid to use it. He did not want the hysterical screaming and the whole star-struck behaviour; he hoped to win their respect instead, so he could help them make this year a memorable and a useful one at the same time – if he was here, though under false pretences, he might as well give McGonagall and Kingsley their money’s worth.

So he welcomed them with a smile and deliberately turned away from Ron, lest he lose his composure. At that moment he noticed the familiar lean figure with long blond hair in expensive clothes and casually acknowledged Malfoy with a nod, not really bothering to paying him a second glance, not trying to decipher his expression. It would have stopped him dead on his feet and the Auror in him might have drawn his wand, if he did – but he was oblivious in his happiness and missed the murderous look in the grey eyes. Instead he swept across the crowd with his authoritative gaze and addressed them kindly: 

“Hello, everyone! In case you somehow missed it, I’m not _actually_ professor Ginevra Weasley-Potter,” he waited for the laughter to die out. “She is, in fact, much prettier than I am.” More laughter and a certain blond youth closed his eyes and clenched his fist in frustration. It amazed him, how easy it was for the Saviour of the wizarding world to sweep his school-mates off their feet, he could see them worshipping every word he uttered and his anger grew exponentially with every moment he was forced to spend in the presence of the young wizarding prodigy.

“Well, I’m happy to report that the lovely Ginevra Weasley-Potter is my wife, which effectively makes me Harry Potter... _blimey_!” he looked down at himself in mocked surprise and evoked another wave of laughter. He was on the move now and nothing could sway him off his feet. “Alas, I am also far _less_ happy to report that professor Weasley-Potter has not been feeling herself lately, due to her complicated pregnancy, therefore I’m very much afraid that you’re stuck with me to the end of this term!”

This time the cheers positively erupted and as he waited for the noise to subside he chanced a glance in Ron’s direction. The redhead sat in his chair, his back fully erect, blue eyes intently following his face, aglow with electric charge and full focus of a chess master. Harry recognized this expression from the war they’ve been through and it formed a lump in his throat: Ron knew he was being cornered and he was effectively reading the opponent – Harry – to devise a response strategy. This was his Ron after all, he’s not going down without a fight and just a thought of a defying look in those worshipped blue eyes made Harry go soft in the knees. He always did love a good fight, it flared his passion so...

He should stop looking at him, he really should, or he will have his mind derailed and not get anything done. Ron was a terrible influence on him, just the knowledge of those intense eyes following him around the classroom, a hint of blazing ginger hair caught with the corner of his eye and his throat would go dry and his mind blank. And he can’t have that. So he turned away resolutely and continued in a voice as calm as he could muster:

“l believe you would appreciate an insight into the course of our work this year as it is indeed not going to be an easy one for you. In fact, having gone through my finals relatively recently myself, I can confirm from a first-hand experience that the N.E.W.T.s are, in fact, the stuff nightmares are made of!” He softened his serious words with another smile and with his bright eyes suddenly carefully examining his students he popped a seemingly unrelated question:

“How many of you were not sufficiently side-tracked by my sparkling personality to have noticed how I arrived here today?”

After a wave of shy giggles a few hands sprang in the air. Harry randomly pointed to the bespectacled girl that was the closest to him and she turned purple: “You’ve apparated!” she said in a high-pitched nervous voice.

Harry nodded approvingly: “That’s correct, Miss...?”

“Oh, I’m... it’s Geek... I mean, my name is Anastasia Geek!” the girl rushed over herself absolutely beet red in embarrassment.

“Right, Miss Geek, you are, of course, correct! I’ve apparated. And how many of you have read the “History of Hogwarts”?” asked Harry innocently, again taking them off guard. I few hands shot up in the air again and Harry smiled beatifically at the embarrassment of others.

“That’s good for you,” he said lightly and continued matter-of-factly: “I never got around reading that blasted brick of a book!” His words triggered a salve of relieved laughter from those who expected reprieve and made the stretched arms of those who expected praise quickly sink to the bottom. “However, I do have at my disposal my brilliant friend, senior Ministry official Hermione Granger-Weasley, who, of course, also read the footnotes, and she often recites to me various bits of useful knowledge from that doubtlessly very interesting publication,” he couldn’t help beaming at Ron as all eyes were on him at the mention of his wife anyway.  The gorgeous ginger looked slightly embarrassed, but grinned broadly along with the rest nonetheless, his eyes finally softening a bit.

“Now, has anyone figured out, why should those two questions be in any relation whatsoever?” asked Harry with a sly smile.

One could almost hear the cogs of the brain of his audience moving in silence, when suddenly the bespectacled girl gasped aloud: “But... it shouldn’t be possible! One cannot apparate or disapparate on the grounds of Hogwarts!”

“Exactly!” exclaimed Harry in a satisfied voice. “Once again, right on the money, Miss Geek!” The girl looked positively ready to faint, though it was unclear if from the fact that the famous Harry Potter remembered her name or that she clearly impressed him.

Draco smirked from under his stormy eyebrows and hissed to himself quietly: “Go on, Potter! Destroy her for everyone else... she’ll never marry, not this one, who could possibly compare?!”

But Harry was not thinking of the romantic carnage he was leaving in his track, he was on the roll and not to be stopped. “So – if one cannot apparate or disapparate within the boundaries of Hogwarts – how did I do it?”

This time, there was no reply. At one point Ron was clearly about to say something, just to break the awkward silence, but he changed his mind and crossed the arms on his chest instead, suddenly a dark look on his face. He knew the answer and so did Draco, but the blond had his reasons to keep quiet. Besides those that if he opened his mouth now, he would probably start howling insults at the cocky half-blood getting a tan in the sunshine of his glory.

So in the end Harry had to answer his own question, a hard angry look in his eyes: “Because the wards of Hogwarts were severely damaged in the Death Eater attack.”

All joy of the afternoon suddenly gone, a chilled silence swept across the room. And all eyes were suddenly on Draco. Confused and angry eyes, contemptuous and accusing eyes. There was hardly anyone in the wizarding world that didn’t lose someone dear in that blasted war and now everyone was staring at Draco as if he had done it all himself.

Draco felt all his blood drain and he felt almost faint. Bloody self-righteous, self-absorbed Potter, he’s going to pay for that! He’s not staying at this sick excuse for a school a day longer if father jumps from the roof of the Manor, he’s not going to have himself subjected to humiliation for the sake of some _papers_ , he was leaving this minute! Emotionally drained from being ambushed by that blasted Weasley and unexpectedly hurt by a sudden flush of memories he tried so hard to shake, he had enough. His hands moved to clean his desk, when suddenly he froze: he felt it on him, that unmistakable brilliant blue gaze he was trying to secretly capture and openly avoid ever since the class started.

Ron hasn’t been paying him any attention at all, clearly too busy playing mind-games with Potter whenever he made a mistake of looking his way, inevitably resulting in a momentary stumble in his performance. But now Ron’s unfathomable eyes were on Draco, effectively locking him down with the weight of _that_ look and Draco found himself unable to move. Helplessly he raised his eyes to meet his stunning blue gaze, fully expecting to find it filled with old hatred and cold contempt, but what was there instead rocked him to the core. Those beautiful deep eyes were suddenly full of astute understanding and … could it be? – sympathy...?

Barely able to control shivering from head to toe he felt exposed, vulnerable and naked under those piercing eyes that somehow did not bare any of their usual coldness, but were strangely warm and almost sorry for him. As he stared into those captivating bottomless blue ponds he felt as if Ron could clearly see through his façade straight into the deepest chamber of his tortured soul, the very one where Draco stored his immense regret, his shame, his sadness at the innocence of youth irreversibly lost, at the part so unforgivably played in that godforsaken war.

He had to call in his hardest Malfoyian drill to keep himself from falling apart under those eyes as he was really just on the verge of tears and desperately wanting to be anywhere but here. His hands were shaking so badly, he had to press one hand down with the palm of the other, to keep the appearance of composure and still he held his gaze.

Ron _understood_. How, why he bothered, Draco didn’t know, but he read it all in that thoughtful, not unkind look. Perhaps it was, because he wasn’t perfect, like holy Potter, because the redhead had himself abandoned his mate and betrayed his trust a couple of times during their long years of relationship, even when Potter needed him the most, and he must have known, how it was to feel guilt and yearn for forgiveness, how undoing it was to seek reprieve and how immensely relieving to receive absolution. The silent ginger somehow just _knew_ and it was all in his cursed blue eyes, burning through Draco’s soul, making him squirm inside.

Then suddenly Ron smiled, not so much with his face, but from inside his lovely eyes, kindness in them making him incomparably more beautiful than ever and Draco knew it was going to be all right. No one ever bothered to look so deeply into Draco Malfoy’s soul and he knew he wasn’t going anywhere. His place was here, close to this man who understood, who didn’t just look, but really _saw_ _Draco_ under all that Malfoyian décor of good breeding, expensive clothes and polished surface. He saw the lost little boy still dwelling somewhere inside, he saw the despair, the regret, the anger and the hurt and he did not look away. Draco could not begin to explain even to himself how that made him feel, it was just the most undoing and the most composing experience in his entire life. Someone saw him for what he was and he did not betray him, he did not run away.

And it was as if cold hand squeezed his heart when Ron finally looked away, his face all but unreadable and Draco felt as if the sun left the skies. He literally shivered at the loss of his warmth, suddenly realizing that Weasley didn’t even know what he’s done, what he’s given him. He _understood_ , Draco had no doubt about that, but he still might hate him, well, maybe not exactly _hate_ , but he wasn’t about to get up and hug him either, was he? He sighed inwardly, mentally reprimanding himself for his foolishness. Weasley was a right menace, count it on him to shake him to the core, pick him up and throw him away, all in one go. But whatever that was, this _moment_ between them, he found that he could go through this now, he was himself again, a child of a condemned Death Eater and fuck you all, thank you very much.

And when suddenly an extremely alert looking Potter came into view, he found he could even muster a smile. A disdainful “ _oh, please, I’m so above you_ ” Malfoyian smile, the best of its kind, as he felt a poisonous flood of pure hatred wash over him. Potter must have noticed something between his best mate and his favourite adversary as he kept glancing from one to the other with a look that suspiciously bordered on jealousy.

Potter, _jealous_? Of him?! Oh, this was just too good! He never thought he’d see the day! And it was all Ron’s doing. He could fall in love with the man just for _that_! Though maybe it was not such a brilliant idea of him to put the idea of “love” in the same sentence with “Ron” as he suddenly found out he had problems keeping these two apart. Not to mention that that blasted ginger managed to go from “bloody Weasley” to “Ron” in a matter of hours in his treacherous mind, honestly, this man was a force of nature!

But his heart sunk, as in that moment Ron smiled at Potter, one of those slow sexy smiles that started in his sparkling blue eyes and continued into a provoking lopsided grin, all the time staring straight at Potter in fake innocence as if saying “ _Relax, mate, we’re just playing._..”

When Potter swallowed hard, turned abruptly and pushed his bony fingers through his dishevelled hair as if trying to gain his composure, one thing was clear to Draco: something was going on between those two; something that went past camaraderie and past their obvious mutual attraction and Draco was suddenly very interested to find out what it was. Every time the blue and green eyes caught up, they were speaking language no one else could understand and Draco found it intriguing, how it was throwing Potter more off balance and putting Weasley more in control.

Anyway, Potter seemed to have finally realized that it won’t do to call in the old ghosts of resentment and continued quickly, though clearly more agitated than before.

“We cannot undo what has been done in those horrible years,” Harry said, his voice unusually rough and serious. “But it is our duty to make sure it never happens again, not in our lifetimes at least,” he stressed. “We had all mourned our dead, we have all lost more than just lives of those who mattered most, my generation lost its innocence, its childhood as we watched the world of our youth crumble around us...” he paused and a cold chill ran through Draco’s back as he realized Potter understood more than he was showing.

“But it came to an end at last and it will not do to dwell in the past. As rough as those years were, they also brought forward an important recognition: it is on us and us alone to protect our way of existence. We cannot linger on the spells and charms of the times past, we have to put our best effort to hand to make sure we remain safe, and nowhere more so in this fine establishment our children will once come to attend.” He finally smiled and added calmly: “And _that’s_ what you’ll be required to do at your N.E.W.T.s.”


	15. Harry: ... the time is now

He knew full well what a panic attack his words would cause and he waited patiently for the hysterical swirl of surprised screams and nervous whispering to subside. In the meanwhile he let his eyes rest on Ron, who just slid a little lower in his bench and closed his eyes with a sigh, shaking his head. Harry had to fight to keep back a laugh, he knew him so well, he could tell _exactly_ what was going on in his best-mate’s mind:

_“Oh, bloodyfuckinghell, just my luck I had to come back this year!”_

That was his Ron, always the one to believe that life had it in for him. While it was, in fact, Harry’s idea....

Something they could do together, to maybe keep them at it after hours, giving them a good excuse to hang out, if nothing else... He smiled at him provokingly when he finally opened his eyes and when he raised his ginger eyebrow, Harry knew his best mate recognized and accepted a challenge. But when he spoke, it was unexpected.

“And just how are we going to do that... Professor?” he asked, his voice raspy and slightly lingering before he let “professor” slip. Harry felt the blood leave his brain and head south at the sight of the small sexy smile playing at those soft lips, addressing him with a title he found unexpectedly arousing. God, he really shouldn’t play with fire so much, Ron was going to burn him alive if he ever left his guard down...

“Well, yes, I was about to explain that,” he said pointedly, turning away and heading the opposite direction, not really sure where, just... far enough from this discomposing man.

“Your entire year will be dedicated on presenting you with knowledge you will need for setting up new wards for Hogwarts. Your N.E.W.T.s will last three weeks and during that time we will collectively set up wards, spells and charms that will protect the Academy to the same extent – or preferably, better – than prior to war. Throughout the period of these three weeks your work will be challenged by the very best of wizards and witches and you will be graded accordingly.”

A rumble of excited voices threatened to drown his voice, so he paused again to make sure they’ve heard every word he had to say:

“I’m afraid that’s not all of it either. There is more. You will all be required to learn about the most useful potions and ingredients to be used in times of conflict as well as repelling charms, healing charms, defensive and offensive spells and there will be a special two-week field exercise where you will be paired with a mentor and required to test your theoretical knowledge in the field. And all of that before the N.E.W.T.s even begin!”

Needless to say there was havoc as he knew there was going to be. This time he didn’t even bother to silence down the excitement, he was well aware how full their plates have been loaded. This was to be a make-or-break year for Hogwarts. The renovation works were almost complete when it came to the part of masonry, but there was so much more to be done and when he needed to get McGonagall and Kingsley on his side, this was the best he could come up with. McGonagall was thrilled to be a part of such a massive project as it also relieved her of the worry how to properly provide for the safety of future students, while Kingsley has been a long time complaining that he really _could_ use some fresh blood and competence in the lines of Aurors, which were largely diminished in the war. For his part, Harry was willing to blackmail Lucius Malfoy in cooperation to help them test the new wards of Hogwarts as he was fully aware that it would take a true master of dark magic to know for _certain_ that they have done well.

Harry was probably the only person with enough guts to take responsibility for the future of the wizarding community he helped save and he launched in it head-first. He loved a good challenge; he liked being a part of something bigger, he loved sharing knowledge, he knew that he had a lot to give and with _Ron_ in the middle of his game, this time Harry also had a lot to gain. _Anything_ , he promised himself, he would do anything and he knew he meant it dead serious.

But Ron was now sitting with the palms of his hands covering his face and mumbling desperately:

“Godric’s balls, _please_ tell me I didn’t just enrol myself in the middle of _this_! What in Heaven’s name has come over me to _ever_ listen to Hermione?! I should have stayed at home, cleaning the pots happily and now I’ll never sleep again!”

And Harry really couldn’t have that, he couldn’t have him doubt himself and regret coming here, so he approached him, for once unnoticed, and casually leaned onto the edge of his desk to look into his beloved face and offer him assurance that they were in this together.

“Hey there,” he spoke quietly with as much gentleness as he could muster. Blue eyes peaked from under the big palms of his hands and from close-up the freckled face looked every bit as young and innocent as he was the first time Harry met him. And it simply melted his heart. He just wanted to hug him right there and tell him not to worry, because he was with Harry now and he would never let any harm - or  shame for that matter – befall him.

But he could see Ron was angry, livid really, as his blue eyes shot sparks and he hissed at him as if he just encountered an enemy, not his very best mate:

“It was you, wasn’t it?! All of it, your crazy idea! What’s your grand plan, Potter? To have me fail and then save me, so that I can see for myself that I can’t do anything without you?!”

This hurt, but Ron never was the one to shoot blunt arrows. Harry recognized it well, that insecurity Ron always fostered somewhere in the warm humidity of his soul, having it fester into a proper sore in the years away from the big wide world. Well aware that he didn’t have much time, he spoke quickly in a low-key voice, hoping desperately that he could convey his feelings through his words in a form that Ron could understand.

“Don’t, please...  Yes, it was my idea, and no, I did not want to humiliate you. You’re going to have to trust me, Ron. You know I don’t ask you that very often, but when I do, I really mean it. This is about you and me, doing something together, building up something we can really look back on and be proud about it. _Together_. Please, Ron...” he whispered desperately, suddenly frightened beyond belief he was going to lose him. If he could only touch his face with his fingers, make him look into his eyes and _show_ him, that he meant no harm, that it was all for them.... But they were surrounded by people and even now he could feel the silver stare of a certain haughty blond bore holes into his back, so all he could do was to _will_ his beautiful stubborn proud mate into understanding ....

And his heart made a loop when the blue eyes finally softened and his beloved redhead pouted a little like a spoilt little boy:

“Trust _you_ , Potter, ha! I should have known better... I've got scars a-plenty, testifying to quite the opposite!” but there was no malice in his voice now and his eyes were playful when he asked Harry teasingly: “So you’re asking _me_ to trust _you_ not to put on my plate something I couldn’t possibly stomach, is that it?”

When Harry nodded, heart in his throat, the beautiful ginger slid forward leaning on his elbow like a snake, still gently balancing his pale freckled face on the palm of his hand and asked in a hushed voice: “So... how do we go about that... Professor? Special credits for after-hours… with the teacher...?”

Harry found himself grounded to the floor, suddenly sporting a hard-on he couldn’t possibly begin to imagine how to conceal as Ron smiled innocently and blinked his big blue eyes. “Merlin, Ron...” Harry all but moaned as the gorgeous redhead bit his lower lip invitingly, looking like sin personified. “Don’t do that, not here...”

Ron merely arched his eyebrow and pulled back, for a second a devilish expression on his face clearly readable to Harry: _“You wanted it, you’ve got it... I can play as well as you, Potter._ _Bring.It.On_.” And then his face went blank and he looked to a point somewhere behind Harry’s back as if the conversation was over and he was bored.

Harry couldn’t move, he couldn’t. He wanted him so badly he was almost willing to make his move right there in the middle of the classroom as everything in Ron’s defying posture begged him to. Still rooted to the ground in front of Ron’s desk he cleared his voice and tried to sound as matter-of-fact and professional as he could muster, though he was afraid that he was failing miserably:

“We’ll take a 15 minute break now so you can discuss the task ahead of you with your fellow classmates. However, when you return to your desks, I will expect your full attention and I will not tolerate any further interruptions in today’s first lesson, save for legitimate questions, of course. Class dismissed. I will see you in 15.”

As excited voices slowly died away around them, Harry spoke quickly and quietly, hopelessly trying to sound as if he was not begging: “We need to talk, Ron.”

“Not here,” Ron shrugged bluntly as if he didn’t care.

“I know... “ Harry said quickly, desperately willing his stupid melted brain to come up with a solution that would allow him to talk to an object of his affection and possibly fuck him senseless. But nothing, he couldn’t come up with a single rational thought and he looked into the captivating blue universe beyond the ginger eyelashes and said simply: “Where then?”

But Ron didn’t answer. Instead he kept staring into his eyes with an unrelenting gaze and Harry felt as if his soul was being stripped down to fractions.

“Why are you here, Harry?” finally asked the redhead and Harry closed his eyes for a second to compose his fleeing thoughts. But he couldn’t do it, all was carnage and havoc underneath his surface and if Ron didn’t want this, didn’t want him, he was going to fall apart here and now.

“You know why...” he finally managed in a shaky voice, not realizing that he was clutching the edge of Ron’s desk with the strength that was turning the bony knuckles of his hands white.

For a while Ron said nothing then his fingers slowly slid up Harry’s hands, covering his long narrow palms with his huge hands all the way to the wrists, closing over the pulse, hot to the touch. For the gentlest of moments he caressed the thin sensitive skin of Harry’s wrist and Harry closed his eyes again and wanted himself to perish in the sensuality of that moment.

“For me...?” he heard his voice spoke softly as if it was ever a question and Harry nodded, still with his eyes closed, unable to speak.

He couldn’t do this anymore, this slow torturous dance they were doing around each other, his mind was falling apart at all the open possibilities, unable to see a way out if the love of his life rejected him once again.

“Forbidden forest then,” he heard his quiet calm voice and just like that his heart jumped back to life. He opened his eyes, suddenly brilliantly green, and found his Ron smiling to him softly, blue eyes so gentle as if he knew how deeply he was cut. “By Hagrid’s Hut, he’s away for another month. We’ll talk. Just give me half an hour after the classes end for today,” he said simply and let go of his wrists.

“ _Be there,_ Ron...” whispered Harry, still unable to understand that he was getting his wish.

“I’ll be there,” said Ron firmly, abruptly standing up and stretching his long body like a big ginger wildcat he resembled. “I’m going for some fresh air,” he said matter-of-factly and headed for the door, leaving the raven-haired wizard alone, thankful for every second he had left to pull himself together before his students returned to the class.

“He’ll be there,” he repeated to himself, fingers once again nervously stuck in his dishevelled hair, still unable to fully come to terms with what just happened. “Sweet Godric, let him be there...” he whispered feverishly and once again felt like flying.

No one saw the slight pale figure lingering just behind the shade of the door-frame, finally slide out in the open. Draco’s heart stopped for a moment when Ron walked straight past him, but he seemed to have gone unnoticed in the shade of a conveniently positioned dark corner.

Draco had been watching them from his hiding place, mesmerized by the obvious display of Potter’s infatuation and Ron’s slow surrender. He found himself curiously enchanted by the intimacy of Ron’s gesture of slowly capturing his best mates’ hands and caressing them gently as if he was his captor and his saviour all in one. He has never seen any act so innocent, surpassing mere camaraderie by so much...

There was definitely some old magic about Ron as Draco couldn’t keep his eyes away from what looked like the redhead was making love to his best mate out in the open.  He was only taking hold of Potter’s hands, for god’s sake, yet Draco found himself unable to look away, desperately wanting for more... more tender persuasion, more of that slow tide of lust and love inevitably bringing those two together, more of that intimacy he himself never had.

He was quickly becoming addicted to a secret display of feelings he found incredibly arousing, to the instinctive seduction Ron was so expertly performing on his clearly smitten best mate. He needed more... He didn’t know himself what it was that he so desperately needed to see, but there was something about Ron taking the friendship down the path of love that he found irresistible. Watching such an alpha male as Potter come undone in the warm hands of his best mate was an experience Draco found overwhelming… just to watch the beautiful ginger dominate and lead had left him with soft knees and hard cock, hopelessly aching to be in Potter’s place, desperately wishing that it was him who was being taken down and left to the mercy of that powerful fiery man he’s been infatuated with for ages…

“He’ll be there,” he repeated Potter’s feverish words to himself and Draco suddenly knew he will be there as well. He couldn’t stay away.


	16. Draco: A not so silent witness...

_“Chasing shadows slipping_  
 _in a magic lantern slide ---_  
 _Creatures of the candle_  
 _on a night-light-ride...”_

Moths, Jethro Tull

 

Ron was calm as an ocean before the storm. He knew this was coming. He knew it ever since that savage night before Harry’s wedding and he knew he wasn’t going to back down. The time has come to give Harry what was his and he was not afraid. He just hoped it would be enough.

~

Harry knew the only way to go through this endless day that will decide his fate was to completely let everything go. He couldn’t do anything about how things were going to work out from where he was standing, it was already decided somewhere inside the chest of that dashing young man sitting in front of him and staring through him with a unreadable expression, his thoughts clearly engaged elsewhere. There was no point to dwell on it.

So he called in all his experience from Auror training, closed himself to the turmoil of overwhelming emotion and let his mind rule until he heard his thoughts running sharp and clear. He could do this. He was Harry bloody Potter and he knew he could teach. Perhaps it was for the last time, if this man was to be no more, but he was going to deliver the best damn lesson these kids are ever going to attend. He looked around the classroom with fresh clear eyes and began to speak.

~

Draco was composed as only one Malfoy could be. If he wanted to do this - and he _needed_ it – he had to keep his wits about. He has to be fast and he can’t be seen. He didn’t know why Ron needed half an hour to get to the Forbidden forest, but it was welcome and it was not going to take him that long. He needs to do this right, because if he was to be found out… he didn’t even dare to consider the consequences. Not only he can forget about completing his N.E.W.T.s;  with what was at stake, Potter would probably obliviate him to say the least, if not just make him conveniently disappear and _Ron_ … he didn’t think the redhead would hurt him, but he did not by any circumstance want to see contempt and mocking in _those_ eyes again. And he had no idea how to even get out of it, should he get caught, somehow “ _Oups, I seemed to have stumbled on your very private conversation and … whatever else you were doing and just decided to stay… carry on, I better jet_ ”, didn’t seem to cut it.

So, it was going to be complicated, but not going was not an option. Draco has not felt this alive and restless in ages. It was as if the years have magically disappeared and he was that nervous, jittery, passionate purpose-driven boy again that was always hiding just under the cold Malfoyian surface. He was part Black after all and they were known for their passion and determination. Just look at that scoundrel Sirius Black, his mother’s cousin! He escaped from Azkaban before it was fashionable and though scary and a source of great shame for his father to be in any way related to him, Draco secretly always thought the man was kind of “cool” as the Muggle-born kids put it.

But he had to go through the rest of the day first and what a better way to kill time than to do what you’re there to do: listen to the teacher - even if it is that miserable Potter! - you might actually learn something. The man is going to grade him in the end – however fair that was and providing he makes it through this day in one piece – so he might as well get something out of this impossible situation. All things aside, Potter was considered crème de la crème of Defence against the dark arts, being Auror and all, with a small matter of having single-handedly evaporated the darkest wizard in ages without any lasting damage to himself under the belt.

So Draco pushed his wretched feelings aside in the best of Malfoy fashion and started to pay attention. And reluctant as he was, he was forced to admit that his childhood nemesis had really hit the nail on the head with taking up teaching. Potter clearly knew what he was talking about, he was open to receive questions and answered them in an easy-to-comprehend and informative way, spicing the lecture with practical examples, interesting facts and simply, his personal charisma. And of course let’s not forget the humour that made Draco roll up his eyes every time the giggling began, but it made the lessons so much less dry and that much easier to follow. All in all, Draco was compelled to admit that Potter’s lesson was by far the best he’s ever attended and that - like it or not – he might yet get out of this blasted Academy with some actual knowledge, thanks to Potter, of all people.

All this time Potter deliberately avoided looking at his best mate, clearly well aware it was affecting his performance, so Draco had plenty of chance for ogling, as discretely as possible, of course. Ron really was a piece of work, _anyone_ would have to admit that.

Draco was sure he’s never seen a man looking so casually breathtaking as the thoughtful-looking ginger managed to be. There was absolutely nothing on him that wasn’t stunning, even under the loose robes one could see hints of a muscled form bordering on perfection and Draco was sure that for once in his life Ron had to have new robes; surely they were not being made standard in this magnificent size, the man looked like he was about a meter across the shoulders! And the part that made it out of the robes – that was just... Draco was, in lack of better words, overwhelmed. 

The long fiery hair looked incredibly cute on him, especially with silky strands escaping his pony-tail and tickling his freckled face, so he had to keep on pushing them behind the ears, mumbling something unintelligible. Draco didn’t even dare to look at his soft generous mouth, lest he starts behaving like a bitch in heat, but he couldn’t stop coming back to his ocean-blue eyes. There was a hint of a sharp intellect in those eyes, along with a whole universe of feelings Draco would be happy to spend his life deciphering. When the ginger smiled at some inward thought, his eyes smiled dreamily with him and Draco’s heart hitched every time he looked around absentmindedly, hoping he was being registered, but too damn proud or self-conscious or whatever bloody else was appropriate to try to catch his eyes. It wouldn’t do. Malfoys didn’t go about trying to capture Weasleys’ looks. They just stalked them and dreamed about fucking them into screaming, apparently.

God, he should really follow Potter’s example and stop looking at the blasted Weasley otherwise he’ll never make it to the end of the day with his wits about. _Composed_ , his arse! More like falling apart at an alarming speed, his eyes worshiping the redhead from hell on their own account! Salazaar’s poison, will that bloody school-day never end, so he can feast his eyes on this blasted menace of a person and let himself go!

And whose _brilliant_ idea was it, to have Flitwick as the last teacher of the day?! Draco could barely see the man for his small statue and couldn’t care less for what he was on about. Who needs charms anyway, the only charm Draco needed right now was a set of blue eyes taking him in and he’d consider himself rightfully bewitched! Finally Flitwick stopped talking, _finally_ he did, squealing something about homework like anyone cared – Draco was sure he could charm someone into sharing that little detail with him later, maybe Potter’s pet, that Geek girl, she looked ever so obliging...

Draco looked around carefully and noticed, with no small amount of confusion, that Weasley seemed to have disappeared practically right in front of his eyes. He felt panic grab him by the neck at the thought that the redhead might beat him to the place of the meeting, so he put all his efforts into sneaking out as fast as the crowd of departing students would allow.

Potter was nowhere to be seen since the afternoon recess, clearly not trusting himself enough to go and sit down next to his best mate in the lawn surrounding the shell of Hogwarts. He’d probably have to step in line to get to him anyway - as soon as the redhead settled down and took out his sandwich, clearly with no intention of visiting the Great Hall on such a lovely day, he was surrounded by the chippering class-mates, primarily girls, who apparently massively decided to start dieting the second their notorious guest celebrity decided to skip his meal. So Draco could only watch him chat casually and flip his killer smile from afar, which was probably just as well, because it wouldn’t do for a son of a confirmed Death Eater to totally annihilate the female population of Hogwarts on his first day.

But now that blasphemous smile and his owner were nowhere to be seen and clearly he was not the only one to notice their absence.

“Where did he go? He was just here!” complained one of the newborn Weasley fan-club members.

“I don’t know,” answered the other, just as confused, but then melted away: “Oh, I suppose it doesn’t matter as long as he’s here tomorrow! Did you ever see such a smile on a man!? I swear I can’t remember a word of what he was saying, I think I must have fainted every time he smiled at me!”

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous, why would he smile at _you_ , he was just smiling casually!” said the first girl, clearly annoyed at the thought that Ron might be smiling at her friend in particular.

Draco rolled up his eyes and slid past them in the best of Slytherin fashion. No wonder Weasley decided to sink into the ground, if he didn’t pull his little stunt, he’d have more spectators at his meeting with Potter than at the Quidditch finals! Cursing quietly he hurried towards the edge of the Forbidden forest, trying to look as inconspicuous as possible, hoping against hope that the redhead – or god forbid, Potter! – didn’t beat him to the place yet. He should have known better, he was apprehending himself mentally; this was the brother of George and Fred Weasley after all, if anyone could disappear into thin air, it was surely someone who learnt to evade and vanish in his cradle!

A bit out of breath but cautious he finally arrived by Hagrid’s hut only to discover, much to his relief, that he was still the only one there.  He looked around with care and tried to figure out what place would he pick for a meeting that’s supposed to stay hidden and what that meant for him. Finally he decided on a hiding place in the shadow of a big willowed tree with a hollow trunk big enough for a small car to fit in and crossed his fingers that he picked his spot well. It was near a small grassy clearing, surrounded by a few moss-covered rocks and looking just private and cosy enough for two people to meet. Now he only needed to use a convenient concealment charm his darling father had thought him and he was all set for a show - or whatever else was coming.

He leaned against a moss-covered rock and put his hot forehead down into the ice-cold palm of his hand for a moment and prayed to whatever God that was listening that he wouldn’t have too much time to himself to start thinking, because he sure as hell wasn’t sure what he was up to and why. Somewhere in the remains of his rational brain there was a voice screaming for him to get out of here as fast as he can and he tried to find some half-witted argument to put it to peace – like maybe he could somehow blackmail Potter with what he found out this afternoon… 

But it all faded to nothing when he finally noticed a hint of golden-red sparkling in the afternoon sun: Ron was sliding down the slope with a casual gait and all of the sudden it hit him with undeniable clarity why was he here. _For this man_. No excuses. And no, he wasn't going anywhere, he didn’t want to.

His breath hitched at the mere sight of sun-rays playing with those escaped fiery strands and he felt a lump in his throat forming: how on Salazaar’s bloody earth is he _ever_ going to control his breathing so close to that damn aura of dashing looks and intoxicating scent?! The redhead was still walking down leisurely, slowly opening the buttons of his robes one by one and finally shedding them entirely when he reached the clearing.

Draco heard the blood in his ears buzzing at the sight of faded Muggle jeans, so low-cut they showed his hip-bones, and a faded blue shirt with rolled up sleeves that fit him like second skin, revealing muscular arms that looked like they could bend trees and bringing forward the stunning contract of his ocean-blue eyes and the flaming hair. Then that devil’s piece of work, the shirt, had the audacity to get pulled up together with his robes for a moment, revealing a pendant of a silver necklace and a hint of dark nubs set over the creamy landscape of perfect muscles and Draco felt a hard-on of his life coming on. And then his eyes got caught on that seductive trail of red hair disappearing under the edge of the frail jeans and he couldn’t, he just couldn’t stop himself from moaning out loud. He promptly covered his mouth with his hand, still not quite able to believe Weasley made him do _that_ just by just sharing a glance of his flawless body.

Ron luckily seemed too wrapped into his own thoughts to notice anything, but, Merlin... just how far gone was he?! He needed to get himself under control or he won’t last a minute in his hide-out, not with Weasley finally settling down on the clearing so close to him that Draco could touch that cursed creamy skin, if he only stretched his arm. Maybe he could spell his own stupid loud mouth shut or – nah, the ginger was too close by for that, absent-minded or not, he was bound to notice magic from this proximity!

Well, that was it, really: if Draco was too brain-dead to have forgotten casting silencing spells before, he was just going to have to be extra careful now. If only he could keep his mouth shut... fat chance of that - with Weasley looking increasingly like he just walked out of warm bed, this was going to be one hell of a challenge Draco just didn’t know if he was up against. Oh, he was _so_ going to be _miserable_ , he just _knew_ he was going to be...! Just one look at that blasted ginger now, when he was fighting a lost battle with his marauding hair, was enough for Draco to realize that _this_ battle is going to have just one loser: Draco and the rest of his composure.

Indeed, in the process of removing his tightly fitted robes, Ron’s hair got all dishevelled as his ponytail went loose, his hair getting all electrified and impossibly tangled.

“Oh, to hell with it!” he growled loudly, suddenly removing the clasp from his hair, letting it spill all over his back like molten  lava and making his eyes almost electric blue against the contrasting background. He might as well have spilled Draco’s insides on the ground. The blond’s teeth sunk into the soft flesh of his palm as he was struggling with another frustrated moan. From this close up Ron’s soft hair just _screamed_ to be touched and they carried a life of their own with the warmth and glittering light and that fresh scent they emitted… Draco closed his eyes and tried to breathe in the moment, to captivate it and make it a part of him, to prolong the feeling of pure ecstasy he felt in his presence. If that blasted Weasley doesn’t get his hair under control, he’s going to break and just _touch_ it... God, he was so fucked…

Unaware of his pagan beauty, Ron sat down, crossed his endless legs and continued to ramble under his breath something unintelligible about how he “ _should have cut the goddamn nest long time ago and make mother happy_ ” as he unsuccessfully tried to get his liquid hair to obey... but then with a soft pop a dark-haired figure appeared and lust-crazed Draco felt a sudden surge of cold acid running down his veins. Can’t he have one private moment with Weasley?! Something to cherish in the tender most part of his soul, something to keep him warm in the long nights when his bed wasn’t empty, but his heart was. Motherfucking _Potter_ , he always ruined everything…


	17. Requited after all...

But Harry was unaware of his hatred, oblivious to Draco's menacing, but well-disguised presence. His brilliant emerald eyes went as wide as galleons when he spotted the sight of a blasphemously gorgeous ginger struggling with the silky river of fiery strands. In two long strides he was with him and kneeled like in worship behind his back:

“Here, let me do that!” he offered softly and sunk his narrow long fingers into the liquid mass of Ron’s warm hair without waiting for reply.

Ron gave up this fight without a struggle and leaned back ever so slightly, allowing his head to rest on Harry’s shoulder and closed his mesmerizing eyes. The scene was so intimate and both men so at peace with it, as if they’ve done it a hundred times before and Draco, with his heart in his throat, almost felt compelled to look away, the last traces of decency in him telling him to close his eyes as he was trespassing on a moment just too private and too precious. But the ginger-haired beauty just held too much power over him, he couldn’t look away, his eyes were being seduced like a moth into the flame and he knew he was getting destroyed here and now.

As the skilled fingers of Ron’s best-mate began to work his magic on his scalp, the sensuous redhead almost purred in pleasure and Draco could hear him moan: “ _Ummmmm, Harry, sooooo good.._.”. It went straight to his cock and apparently he was not the only one. Potter looked every bit like a man starved, ready to take a bite out of his ginger prey. His eyes were as huge as green ponds, his body-language spoke of a tension about to break and his breathing hitched a notch higher, now on the edge of erratic.

Without warning Harry’s bony fingers suddenly tightened, pulling on redhead’s hair as if he was trying to gain control and the young wizard asked in a hushed voice, unmistakably underlined with danger and edge:

“Why did you do it, Ron? Why do you keep doing this to me? Why? Cause, I swear, if you don’t want it... I can’t take much more...”

Ron’s eyes came to life like two blue flames, but Draco could see there was no genuine surprise in them.

“I didn’t know why I did it... that night…“ he finally spoke softly as if trying to figure out what he was going to say as he went. “I just knew I wanted to... I _needed_ to... it felt as if I was losing you and I couldn’t take that...”

“So I decided to get drunk not to lose courage and I hoped to get you drunk as well, so at least we’d have an excuse if things got out of hand...” the redhead said with a small sheepish grin and Draco saw Potter join in with the tiniest of smiles behind his back: it was such an honest and innocent confession as only Ron could come up with. But the ginger Gryffindor was smiling no more, his eyes suddenly set somewhere in the past, as if watching a movie play in front of his mind and when he spoke the words were hungry and tense with passion.

“But as it was, I can’t blame anything on drink. I was drunk with you, Harry, intoxicated with all those crazy youthful hopes that just wouldn’t die… and I didn’t want to see them fade to nothing. I had to let you know that things could have been different, I couldn’t just let everything I ever dreamed of leave me without a proper goodbye. Goddammit, you were mine first, Potter!” he said fiercely, his eyes suddenly hard and livid. “Why should she have you?! The one thing that I got first, my brand new friend, mine, all mine... The one person _everyone_ admired, wanted _me_ of all people for himself, I couldn’t give you up, not even for my sister, not without giving you a hint of what you mean to me....”

“So I guess I got all territorial and obsessive and possessive... I knew we had something going on between us and I decided to play it, let it take us where it may...  And when I saw that look in your eyes...“ his voice finally let go of the terrible tension and turned gentle. “Your eyes, Harry, they’ve defined my existence for as long as I can remember... and when I looked inside them and just _knew_ you wanted it, too, you wanted _me_... I just couldn’t stop myself anymore, I couldn’t and I didn’t. I did it all, just to be everything you ever wanted me to be that night, all of it, just for you.”

Suddenly he moved with stunning speed and reached behind him and before Draco’s eyes could adjust, Ron had Potter sitting in his lap leaving him positively breathless and mesmerized under the direct stare of his gorgeous object of desire.

“I want you to look into my eyes as I say this, Harry,” he said in a raspy voice that curled Draco’s skin and almost made Harry swoon. “I want you to read my lips and my heart, if you can, so there cannot be any mistake as to what I’m saying,” his eyes sparkled with an out-of-this-world beauty and Draco saw the raven-haired youth swallow a lump in his throat as he stared completely love-struck.

“I love you Harry James Potter, you and you alone. I don’t think I’ve ever been in love with anyone else and I can't imagine I ever will be. Everything just fades in the background when you’re around and you’re the only one that feels real. Ever since I was eleven, my dreams have only had one hero, one person to look up to and share myself with, one man that plagues me to no end, makes me yearn and feel things I have no name for. You, Harry, it was always only you,” he said softly, staring down those unfathomable green eyes, once again huge with held back tears.

“You have no idea...” he smiled somewhat insecurely from the depth of his beautiful blue eyes, slowly clasping his big hands behind Harry’s back, pulling him closer. “God, I’ve been moaning your name in my sleep since we were fourteen, ever since that blasted Triwizard tournament and it used to leave me trembling in the night, feeling raw and guilty and exposed, and just craving for more....so much more. All these years I’ve only been day-dreaming about only one person:  _you_ , Harry, your beloved face safely stored behind my eyelids…” Blue eyes wordlessly pleaded for an answer, but the young man in front of him was unable to speak lest he shatter to pieces.

Ron sighed desperately and looked away with unmistakable pain in his eyes: “Fuck, man… I’m not good with this… I thought I could say it right, but I you know how I am with words and feelings… I always let my body speak for me…” He looked straight back into the bottle-green eyes of his Harry and said in a hushed heated voice: “So hear this, maybe you’ll understand… I’ve only ever tossed off to one image and one image alone, yours, Harry… and to this day, there has hardly been a day that you don’t give me a hard-on just by looking at me! If only you knew... I used to wake up terrified that one day you’d hear me coming biting your name into my lips and you wouldn’t want me anymore, the bloody pervert that I was... I just... I always thought we were meant to be and I wouldn’t stop dreaming that one day you’ll come to me and show me...  _love_ , I suppose,” he smiled shyly and Draco could see Potter’s heart breaking reflect on his face.

“But you never did... you always had so much on your plate and I figured you didn’t need the affections of your poof best friend thrown your way. I told myself countless times to just get over this impossible feeling, to give Hermione what she wanted, because I truly _do_ care for her and it should be enough, enough for me, for someone who’s never going to be special to anyone as unforgettable as you – but then I would catch you looking at me with those brilliant green eyes and all my resolutions disappeared into thin air. You just melt down my defences, Harry and you make my heart jump to all those impossible conclusions, you always did...”

“Shut up, Ron, please shut up…” Draco heard Harry whisper pleadingly and barely audibly, clearly completely besides himself by the overwhelming load of his best-friend’s neglected feelings. Emotional range of a tea-spoon indeed, thought Draco to himself, hurt and touched and bothered by the tenderness the unassuming redhead was revealing. Harry’s chest was rising and falling so rapidly, Draco could swear he could almost see his heart trying to rip its cage, but Ron was on the roll now and nothing could stop a stream of overdue confession as he was staring down those beloved green orbs he adored all his grown-up life.

“How can I _not_ tell you that, Harry? Will you not let me say it now, when it’s all out in the open? It means the world to me to be able to stare at this beautiful face of yours and say it, though I know it’s all over now and I’ve lost. _I love you_ , Harry Potter, I wish I could ask you to be mine…” His last words vanished in a violent attack the raven-haired youth launched on his mouth.

“Please don’t torture me, Ron… no more… I can’t bare it…” sobbed the clearly bewildered young wizard between his feverish kisses, tears pouring down his cheeks with abandon. “God, how _stupid_ I was, how oblivious… how could I ever _not_ see what’s inside your heart, I’m sorry, love, I’m so sorry…” Harry looked as if he was on the edge of sanity and Draco was so shell-shocked to see him in such a state that he actually found some compassion in his heart for him – after all, it’s not every day that you are in love with the most god-like person on the planet, have them dying for you in unrequited love and never notice it - and then manage to blunder so spectacularly that you end up with their sister instead! Draco _had to_ be sorry for him, bloody _Dementors_ would cry over such a fool!

But all his sympathy disappeared as he witness Ron gently kiss the tears off his face one by one, hushing him gently, shielding him from his pain in his bear-like embrace and whispering words of love and forgiveness. Truly, Ron was unstoppable; with this rate he will have Potter raving mad by the dark-fall as Draco could not see how could the clearly tormented youth take another spin on emotional roller-coaster and stay sane. But he must have underestimated the young man once again, as he emerged from Ron’s hug with streaks of tears still drying on his face and smiling through the diamonds of tears still lingering on his long jet-black eyelashes.

Soft breath left Ron’s mouth as he sighed in a shaky voice: “Godric, you’re beautiful…” Slowly, as if asking permission, he leaned forward and placed a tender kiss to one of the tears in the corner of those irresistible eyes and as Harry closed his eyes, he continued to gently kiss the tears off the long eye-lashes. Harry bone-pale and chest heaving like a storm caught in marble, just let him. He let himself be lavished in those maddening loving kisses, sliding down his face. All the way down, from his legendary brilliant eyes resting closed under the stormy black eyebrows; over his sensitive ears that had him moaning within seconds and had Ron chuckle softly at his excitement; down the edge of his clean-shaven face all the way to the sensitive chin – another moan - and a little up again, to the delicate curve of his mouth, slightly open, anticipating its invader with warm gentle breath.

Draco found this love-dance enchanting, overwhelming and impossibly arousing. He tried to imagine what Potter was feeling and succeeding almost too splendidly as he was now so achingly hard that he couldn’t possibly imagine _not_ getting a release. As he watched Ron’s tongue slide in and out of his mouth, licking and teasing in their path, he bit his lip bloody not to moan, not to make a sound that was struggling to get out from somewhere deep in his primal core. There was no way in hell he could not touch himself and his long slim fingers slipped inside his robes and began rubbing expertly.

He was practically drooling watching Weasley work his magic down the body of a completely surrendered raven-haired wizard; at first going in a typical Ron-esque fashion, bluntly and brutally, tearing buttons and have them fly everywhere, sucking and biting and then suddenly licking slowly and rubbing with torturously gentle fingers, reducing Potter to nothing but a quivering mass of yelps and moans and burning bundles of nerve-ends. Draco heard him beg and he was silently begging with him: “More, Ron... gods, more... all of it... _ohmyfuckinggod_ don’t stop, don’t you _ever_ stop...”

Ron had Harry stripped to the waist within minutes and then pushed him with his back against a moss-covered rock, the very one behind which Draco chose his hiding place. That gave the messed-up blond perfect opportunity to observe with bewildered eyes every little ministration the devilish redhead performed on his worshiped best-mate and it was pure torture. And yet he wouldn’t give it up for the world. The red-haired devil took his breath away, his presence intoxicated him to a point that he was feeling dizzy and disorientated and no longer aware where they were and why was he even here. His mouth gaping slightly, his chest heaving with a storm of passion and emotion, his eyes were dead-set on every motion of this gorgeous ginger straight from his wildest wet dreams, making love to a man Draco would right now love to slowly torture to death.

Draco’s body was moving of his own accord, almost completely in tune with the rhythm Ron had set for his lover and for once Draco Malfoy and Harry Potter had one thing in common: their bodies were arching against every little lust-filled motion Ron made. The redhead went to kneel in front of his best mate, licking and gently biting his nipples into inflamed red peaks until Potter was almost ready to come just from that. His glorious ginger mane then slowly slid down the impressive abdominal muscles of Harry’s pale Auror-trained body, tightly rubbing with his large loving hands, gently trailing down with his soft expert tongue until his lips found the trail of dark hair, leading into Potter’s pants, thin fabric strained to the maximum over the contours of a huge hard-on he was sporting.

And then there was no stopping Ron. He looked straight into Harry’s eyes with his predatory look and smiled devilishly from the inside of his wild stormy eyes and it almost made Draco come at the sight. Honestly, he didn’t know how much more of that he could take and it wasn’t even for him... Weasley was an animal, a sex god in human form, lust and magic packed together so tightly it was making him come undone in every possible way.

Ron slowly lowered his head, closing his mesmerizing eyes and smelling the fabric over Harry’s crotch, rubbing his beautiful face in it and finally licking over it with slow lazy motion that made Potter growl loudly, sink his fingers into the ground and arch his body towards his mouth, desperately seeking more contact with that accursed soft mouth. Ron’s big hands went on rubbing gently over the fabric, cupping his glorious hard-on, probing the softness of his balls and Draco knew there’s no way in hell Potter’s ever going to last for “all of it”. He was ready to come right now and Draco was right there with him on the road to oblivion.  

Staring at his big hands, popping the buttons of his pants open one by one, as if in anticipation of a sight so hopelessly desired for years, Ron’s smart fingers finally freed Harry’s erection from its confines and Draco tasted his own blood in his mouth at the sight of hunger in Ron’s hard blue eyes when he took in all of his best friend’s might. Draco had to admit, Potter was _impressive_ in more ways than one, but if the bulge in Ron’s pants was anything to judge by, he had _nothing_ on Weasley, the man was clearly as much of a bear in _that_ area as anywhere else.

And once again Ron’s magnificent blazing head sunk down into Harry’s lap and this is when Draco finally lost control. Potter’s begging and helpless yelps just a background to a rush of blood in his ears, the hand on his cock nothing but a blur and his eyes fixated on that heavenly cursed mouth giving pleasure in every possible way. Harry sunk his fingers deep into Ron’s warm hair in desperate attempt to control his movements, to make him take him in faster, deeper, whole, but Ron wasn’t giving in. Clearly set on to prolong his lover’s pleasure as long as humanly possible, he pinned his hips down with his large hands and sucked him off expertly, just to the point of exploding, then closed his bewitching eyes and removed his mouth just to breathe softly over the wet and exposed skin of Harry’s cock, dripping and begging for release. He hummed a soft “o _hhhh, Harry, so good..._ “ that tore another growl from somewhere deep within the raven-haired youth who was so far gone that he no longer had any control over his body. Ron took over completely and he was running the show like a master of ceremony in the art of lust and love.

And then Potter began to talk gibberish, a tangled mess of hissing sounds and desperate yelps, Draco recognised as parseltongue and it clearly drove Weasley over the edge. With a cut-the-nonsense movement of his large hand he let his huge cock out in the open, looking positively ready to fuck Potter into insanity with the purple thick shaft, pulsating with vengeance of lost years and pure unabated lust. But he must have realized Harry was too close to completion to care how he got there. So he simply slid his cock near his lover’s and took them both into one of his large hands. And when he began tossing them both off, finally a chip came off his composed façade...

The blue eyes lost their focus and his body fell into an erratic rhythm of rocking and rubbing, faster and faster. A stream of expletives tore away from that beautiful soft mouth, the need in his voice indicating just _how much_ he wanted this, how long it was overdue: _“Fuck, Harry... fuck, love... I’m coming, oh myfuckingGodric_ , I’m gonna come all over you, gorgeous...”

Draco’s legs gave in and was ready to come hard, oh, yesss, he was _ever_ so ready, his silver eyes huge and body tense on the verge of breaking. He felt his release rising from somewhere deep inside his balls and he felt it was going to tear him in two. He just needed something, _anything_ to break him, to have the tidal wave lift him and come crashing down on him... and he got it, _oh sweet Merlin did he ever so get it_ , when Ron arched his back like a wildcat, throwing his head backwards, his blue eyes suddenly in the same height with kneeling Draco, staring directly at him as if he could see him and whispered in a strained needy voice: “Need you… come for me, love....”

And Draco came. With a scream. Staring into those intense blue eyes so close to him, that gorgeous generous mouth that was his first, he came so hard he collapsed in on himself, spurting endless strands of pearly liquid all over himself and couldn’t care less if the world came to an end at that very moment. For a fraction everything stopped, it was just him and that time-loop of perfect bliss and completion.

What really saved Draco from giving himself away was the fact that Harry came at the same time and even harder, if that was possible. It seemed that the word “love” from Ron’s mouth was his poison, his irresistible aphrodisiac, the last push he needed to tumble down the cliff of his desire head-first into the whirl of completion and the young wizard positively roared his release into the echoing silence of the forest with his lover’s name on his lips: “Ron…!!!”

To Harry it was all about Ron, about his beautiful, patient, warm, loving ginger, who waited for him all these years until life took over and pushed him aside once more. Yes, this moment, this bliss was all for him, the gorgeous redhead that was staring Harry in the face as he was coming with unstoppable yelps, all over him, just like he promised, with years of need and desire etched on his young vulnerable face; this was his moment, _their_ moment and Harry wasn’t ever going to let go of him again. Ever. He never felt so in love and shattered to pieces as in that moment when his body was still convulsing with the shock of his mind-shattering sex and he couldn’t stop saying it: “ _Iloveyou... loveyou... loveyou,_ I love you, Ron, _ohmygod_ , how could I not say it before, I love you so…!”

And when that huge body finally collapsed on top of him, covering him from head to toe, over-flooding him with his warmth, he felt like he could just stay like this forever and never ask for anything more. If he was only born to be here, for this moment alone, it would have been enough. To feel his heart beating against his chest, crazy and erratic, to have his sweat mingle with his own, feel his warm breath on his neck and that heavenly mouth looking for his pulse… Harry didn’t know if he was ever going to open his eyes again. He didn’t want to.

But gradually his breathing slowed from the war-drum rhythm to a more normal pace and he reluctantly opened his eyes just to meet a universe of blue, shining like stardust, looking at him with the expression of total devotion and wonder. Ron smiled one of his small _oh-boy-what-just-happened_ smiles that made him look a decade younger and Harry felt like a whole new world of protectiveness and possessiveness spring to life within him.

What the fuck just happened, indeed?! He felt like he was transported to another dimension, hardly remembering anything from the first kiss on, that moment when their lips finally met and Ron totally unhinged him with his mouth. God, was that even _legal_? How could a man kiss like that, there should be a law against someone unscrewing the floor from under your feet with their lips! Everything, _every bloody moment_ from then on was just a total bliss to Harry, he felt totally immersed into the deadly flow of love and lust Ron was writing on his body and he could already feel his addiction returning as he stared down those blue bottomless ponds full of love and desire and Ron smiled again, one of those slow sexy smiles that hitched Harry’s breath and made him feel enslaved to this perfect male, belonging to him.

Still spent from their outburst of passion, he could already feel a steady flow of life and lust returning to his body as Ron leaned against his ear and whispered, all hot breath and seduction:

“That was _bloody brilliant_ , Harry… Can we do that again?”

Yes, he was definitely _damned_ now, he will never get this redhead out of his system, now that he’s been given a taste of his passion and... god, _impressive_ skills.

“Insatiable, are we?” he tried to tease him lovingly, to prolong that game of seduction he found so enjoyable, but soft purring “ _oh, you have no idea!_ ” in his ears elicited a right moan from him: no way he’s ever going to outlast this feral man, Ron was driving him crazy by just _breathing_ next to him!

“How the hell didn’t we do that before?!” he asked himself incredulously, amazed at his own stupidity, at his ability to hold himself back in the presence of this overwhelming man, at all the years thrown away in pointless yearning, when _this_ was here all the time, his for the taking.

“I don’t know really,” chuckled Ron softly, still somewhat panting and clinging to him possessively like an overgrown plush kitten. “I guess cause we’re a couple of idiots, who can’t talk a shit-worth of feelings. That would be just too... _poof_ , I guess.” They looked at each other and started shaking with laughter, Harry’s eyes moist from all the released tension and Ron positively roaring with heart-felt joy.

“Oh, man... _stop it._... I’m going to burst.... please stop it now, stop laughing, you’re going to kill me here....” finally begged Harry, bursting into another giggling fit every time he shed a look at the smiling freckled face of his best mate. “Oh, bloody hell... that was just too much...” he tried to take control of himself and wiped tears of laughter from the corners of his eyes. “Here I am, finally getting what I so hopelessly wanted after so many years gone by, so much time wasted and all I can do is _murder_ myself laughing... “ he was shaking his head, desperately trying to fight off another laughing fit.

But he really couldn’t think of why he should even bother. He has never felt so overwhelmed with happiness. Just being in the shelter of Ron’s arms gave Harry everything he was looking for in life: he felt loved, safe and... well, complete.

“And to think that I wanted to do this with Cho Chang,” he chuckled softly, gently pushing the strands of fiery hair behind Ron’s ears and trying to take in every emotion he could find in those deep blue eyes. Ron kissed him on the mouth, gently, almost chastely and as if he suddenly became aware of his weight crushing Harry’s leaner body, he rolled off him and his eyes focused at the sky.

“Nah, Cho was all right, I guess. Pretty, that one, just a bit of a cry-baby... Besides, you should consider yourself lucky,” he smiled with a sudden memory rolling by. “My first kiss went to Malfoy.”

Harry felt as if someone poured a bucket of ice cold water over him and the broken man in his shelter behind the mossy rock came to life with a shiver.


	18. Actually - it was really nice...

“ _What_?! When... Why?! Are you _mental_?! Malfoy, of all people?!” Harry was positively seething. Wave after wave of jealousy came rolling down his veins when he thought of an undeniably handsome blond with a haughty look in his extraordinary silver eyes, staring at _his_ Ron across the classroom. All that went around his head was: _This afternoon, I had him in my class this afternoon and I didn’t fucking murder him! I should have finished him off years ago, the bastard..._

He didn’t realize he lift himself up into a sitting position, his fists balled and his green eyes on fire. Ron looked at him with genuine surprise and pulled his upper body up to lean on his elbows:

“Calm your tits, Potter! Merlin, one would think I cheated on you or something!” he said with an arched eyebrow and a small smirk playing on his lips. Harry finally realized that he over-reacted, so he slowly let his tensed shoulders relax and gradually slid back into his position next to Ron’s body. But the suspicion never really left his eyes and after a moment he asked carefully, trying his best to sound casual, though failing spectacularly:

“So, how did it happen? And how come you never mentioned it? And _why_ , Ron, for God’s sake _why_?! I thought you hated that obnoxious git!” he said nothing short of feverish in the end, his voice poorly disguising how agitated he was. A pale messed up blond in his hide-out waited for reply with a drumming heart.

“But that’s why...” chuckled Ron soflty. “I swear I hated the pompous git like no other and I was up to do _anything_ to get back at him. He was constantly at my throat, for being poor – like I could help it! – and being a nobody and you know, a shame to the purebloods – like being a slave to the Dark Lord was so much _better_ for the pedigree!” he erupted, a hint of old anger still sparkling in his transparent eyes. Draco rolled in into himself as if being kicked in the stomach. His eyes stared blankly in front of him, not seeing what was there, but an image of his 14-year-old ghost throwing the spikes at poor inconspicuous Weasley just because he could. He could kick that boy unconscious now and tell him to get the fuck away from Weasley, cause the man will hex his life for good…. but that boy was before the kiss... a universe apart.

“So he cornered me in the fourth year, after the Second task, after it became clear that you chose me as... you know what... “ Ron actually blushed at these words and Harry fell in love with him all over again.

“Anyway, he was livid that you picked me. You know how he always had his eyes on you, ever since the first year...“ - at this point Draco closed his eyes and mentally banged his head against the floor – trust it to stupid Weasley to get it all wrong! - “Well, he cornered me in an abandoned corridor at Hogwarts, late as always from the dorm to the Potions – like I was in a hurry to get there! – and he had his cronies with him, you know, Crabbe and Goyle and the whole snake-pit lot. He started mocking me, suggesting that I thanked you for rescuing me with... _private services_ ,” Ron could barely speak now, stuck between the genuine laughter that memory always evoked in him and a curious embarrassment brought about by a memory of those awkward teenage years.

Seeing his obvious embarrassment, even Harry had to fight to stifle a laugh – it was in such a dire contrast with the things they were doing just moments ago, that he found it hilarious and not just a little endearing.

“Don’t laugh!” sulked Ron, obviously aware of his efforts and Harry had to close his mouth with the palm of his hand to stop himself from further transgression. “I will have you know, that I was sensitive about those things back then! I was just beginning to think about you in _that_ way, and when Malfoy has said it _out loud_ , it felt as if he could see through me and it made it _real_ and I was more than a little confused and embarrassed about myself back then!”

At this point Harry found his mouth, kissing him thoroughly, drinking the innocence of those days from his lips, apologizing and thanking him in one for being who he was, his lovely fresh unspoilt Ron.

“Mmm... I could get used to that... you sure you care about the rest of the story?” asked the redhead, clearly more interested in exploiting a more carnal aspect of their relationship, but Harry knew it was going to bother him later to no end if he didn’t find out about that Malfoy business and decide if he should get rid of the blond or simply ignore him.

“No, go on...” he prompted between two kisses, but quickly discerning this wasn’t going to happen as long as he was trying to eat every word that Ron produced straight into his mouth. So he moved away, aroused and slightly bothered, but determined to hear the end of this story he so unfortunately stumbled at.

“Well, I wasn’t going to let him throw his filth at you and what was between us,” said Ron with indignation. “So I decided to give him a piece of his own medicine and close his dirty mouth the only way I knew how... I kissed him,” he said simply, his voice disarmingly soft as if the memory wasn’t at all bad and Draco’s breath hitched, his fists balling up, his back hunching as if expecting an attack of emotion he had no name for.

A sharp intake of air from the raven-haired youth indicated that this was not how he pictured the turn of events and before he could stop himself he hissed:

“You didn’t! Ron, tell me that you didn’t!” But Ron just stared at him calmly and gave the tiniest flutter of his ginger eyelashes. “You did...” Harry literally saw red. He was ready to _murder_ Malfoy if he ever got his hands on him, how dare he ever come near his lover with his filthy mouth, but why, oh, why did Ron never bothered to tell him? “And you never told me.... _Why didn’t you tell me_?!” he translated his thoughts into words in a voice livid with murderous jealousy he didn’t bother to disguise.

“Well, that’s the weird part, actually...” said Ron, sounding thoughtful and completely oblivious to the fact that he was turning Harry’s insides out. “When it was done, I fully expected _him_ to tell the whole school about it by the end of the day... I mean, what better way to get back at me than to tell the whole world that I forced myself on him and what a bloody poof I was, right?” he looked at Harry, still genuinely puzzled after all these years.

Harry figured he could make a pretty good guess why Malfoy never ratted Ron out and he looked at the redhead with incredulous eyes. Was he really so oblivious and naïve? But then again, Ron never kissed himself, he had no idea what those soft alluring lips of his were able to do, how overwhelmingly he knew how to kiss, how much he was giving away when he kissed with abandon… how could he know indeed?

“But he never said anything, you know... I reckon he was just too appalled that I dared to cross that line, to enter his world, maybe he just blocked it from his memory, I don’t know... I honestly don’t care,”  Ron shrugged because he never really gave a damn why Malfoy chose to stay silent. It’s not like Ron was embarrassed by what he’d done, in his mind he was just teaching Malfoy a lesson, but if the blond wasn’t going to say anything, neither was he. Why complicate things?

And Harry seemed to understand even though he was now staring at Ron with the most curious look of incredulous wonder and burning jealousy. He tried to tell himself to calm down or Ron won’t talk to him anymore and he _needed_ to hear everything – the redhead was already looking at him with a small frown on his face as if he couldn’t decide if he made a right decision sharing as much as he did. So Harry forced himself to keep a solid façade and popped one last question:

“So... how was it?”

Ron didn’t realize it yet, but Draco Malfoy’s good fortune hung on a very thin thread of Ron’s answer. Harry was watching him intently, like a hunter making sure he won’t miss any attempt at concealed emotion. And Draco just listened, his eyes closed, his body tense, his heart thumping wildly enough to escape its cage, expecting his words like executioner’s axe, ready to have all his sacred memories butchered. And when Ron spoke, he broke them both.

“ _Actually_...” he said, voice warm and creamy like honey. “It was really nice.”

Draco’s eyes popped open and his heart threatened to go into an overdrive. He heard Potter hissing and it was all ecstasy to his ears.

“ _Nice_! You bastard... _nice_?! You thought kissing Malfoy was _nice_?!” He was almost suffocating in anger, but Ron just stared at him calmly and said in a lazy, matter-of-fact manner of his:

“What? Did you want me to lie to you?”

“Why... NO! YES... I mean... “ Harry was shouting now, unable to understand how Ron could keep his cool under such an outpour of hostile emotions. “It’s _Draco bloody Malfoy_ , Ron!!!” he finally shouted. “He thought you were less than dirt under his feet, he probably still does! How could you _like_ how he kissed you?! I thought you hated the man!”

“And I do,” said Ron calmly, slowly stabbing Draco through his heart with his words, just before he corrected himself. “Well, at least I did back then, but I told you, _I_ kissed _him_ , not the other way around, I knew what I took on when I did it,” he said almost roughly, clearly set on not to have Harry dictate his feelings.

“If you let me explain instead of barking at me, you would have already learnt what I meant,” he said with an arched eyebrow, a hint of anger in his feral blue eyes. Harry’s chest was still heaving wildly, but a shade of danger in Ron’s voice made him stop on his road to launch another verbal assault and he merely hissed:

“Explain then, _goddamnyou_...!” And you better make it good, he thought to himself wildly, because Draco Malfoy’s life at this moment wasn’t worth a sickle.

“Well, first of all, you should know that I took him completely by surprise... Never in a million years did Draco Malfoy think that Ronald Weasley of all people would cross the distance and come to claim him from his gutter. He was stunned, frozen, petrified really. He was so out of it that when I pulled him up against me, I had to hold him, cause his knees buckled. And when I closed in on his mouth, his lips just parted as if he was too shocked to put up a fight and he let me right in...”

Ron’s voice was almost dreamy, warm as honey in a way that only sentimental memories could make a person and Harry had to close his eyes to stop himself from strangling him. But he couldn’t stop the words from coming as he requested them himself:

“It only lasted for a few moments or so, but I remember his mouth was welcoming, and soft and moist and sort of… fresh… almost like it was his first kiss as well, though he must have kissed tons of people by then- “ _No… no, I didn’t, you were my first, Ron,”_ thought Draco feverishly at this point, almost dizzy from recognition that Ron even remembered. - “It felt like he melted under my mouth, like I somehow got to kiss someone… a _person_ underneath all that arrogant rubbish… someone who responded to me with a need for warmth… almost like I kissed Draco and not Malfoy, I kissed the boy under all that pile of pompous shit and he was just as awed at the experience as I was… it felt like… well, like he really wanted it and desperately needed to be close to someone…,” said Ron with a confused expression, clearly thinking he wasn’t making much sense, but the soft look in his ocean blue eyes almost stopped Draco’s heart dead.

The blond literally forgot how to breathe. Because that was _exactly_ how that kiss felt for him… intimate as if someone was exploring him from the inside for the first time, spreading its warmth from the soft lips over his entire body like a hot tidal wave, overwhelming to the point of making his knees buckle and melting his soul, innocent and yet incredibly exciting and _so_ _unbelievably_ erotic that if filled his dreams ever since. And Ron _knew_. He knew what he did to him and he never used it against him. He _remembered_ their kiss and he didn’t think of it with disgust… it almost seemed as if he _cherished_ it… he didn’t even bother to lie to Potter…

Sudden buzzing in his ears reminded him that he needs to draw air and he opened his eyes to a sight so disturbing, he actually stepped back in instinctive self-defence. Harry Potter’s eyes were set on a killing mode.

The Gryffindor was clearly in no state to talk as there was pure liquid hatred in his green eyes, his entire body language indicating he was ready to launch himself at his best mate and finish him off. Voldemort himself would have been looking for his wand at the sight of a young wizard, moving in for a kill – but Ron was calm as a mountain in the storm and looking not at all apologetic.  

“You… how can you… how _could_ you… _GOD, I hate you sometimes_!!!” Harry finally found his voice and howled, using last atoms of his strength to hold himself back. “I hate you! Can’t you see!? How could you give him that? How could you still think of him like that? It should have been _me_ , how _dare_ you! _How dare you tell me now_?!”

The winds rose in a sudden outburst of magic – Potter really was a force of nature when he was on the edge of sanity – but Ron would have none of it. His temper rising from nowhere, he grabbed Harry by the neck and pulled him closer as if he weighed nothing, as if his anger was nothing to him.

“ _Because you asked_ , you fool!” he bellowed, a hard feral look suddenly in his blue eyes. “It happened and that’s the way it happened. I’m not going to lie to you, I’m not going to start this, whatever we have going on between us, with a lie and you best learn to live with it. Yes, I kissed another man, yes, I enjoyed it, but you’re just as much to blame as I am that it’s wasn’t you! I would have _loved_ it to be you, I would have _killed_ for it back then as I’m killing everything that’s good about my life for it now. Can’t you see, Potter? Didn’t you hear a word of what I was saying, Harry? I.LOVE.YOU. You. Not my wife and certainly not Malfoy. You. And whatever else happened to this day, it doesn’t _bloody_ matter. I want to be with you. You’re everything I ever wanted, Harry…” his voice trailed off suddenly lost and insecure.

“Are you going to throw it all away, cause I can’t lie to you?” he asked finally and his sincerity broke Harry.

“ _No_! No... never, no.... I just... GOD, I wish I didn’t ask!” Harry finally admitted to himself and felt like melting inside his best mate, to be able to feel his heart, to make sure it was beating for him. “I just hoped... you would say you hated it or something... it would make it slightly less hurtful and less important... I just wish for once you didn’t feel the need to be so bloody honest!” he finished with misery clearly reflecting in his voice.

“But why on Earth for, Harry?” The surprise in Ron’s voice was genuine. “It’s all ancient history; I didn’t even see Malfoy for years, right up until today. As soon as I let him go, he went all Malfoyian on me, you know, screaming at me what a nobody I was, you know, the usual rot…. I mean, he’s done nothing but mocked me ever since! Remember that horrible song from the fifth year: Weasley is our king?”

Draco went pale in his hiding place. _“Shut up, Ron, you know nothing,”_ he thought miserably. “ _I wrote you a bloody song, only it was slightly different before Pansy caught me writing it… I mean, I couldn’t really have the whole school singing "Weasley is my king", could I_?!”

But Ron clearly saw that Harry was still seething, so he continued his argument: “He always knew how to get to me, how to hurt me where I was most vulnerable. I know we turned that stupid song around on them and it really bit them in the arse, but that was all his doing! He fucking hated me, he probably still does… How can you possibly imagine...”

“I know, goddamit, Ron, I know!” Harry interrupted, still agitated and angry and wanting to punch someone and just _hurt_ bloody Malfoy! “I know and I’m sorry I’m like this...It’s just – I don’t want anyone to touch you, but me, not a soul, ever again, _ever_!” he erupted, not bothering to hide how hurt and jealous and possessive he was feeling.

“Aww, Harry… come here, love…”  Ron pulled him closer, let his mouth lead the way and healed his wounds, one gentle kiss by another, until Harry calmed down, his jealousy finally subsided and as the gentle ministrations proceeded to be somewhat more aggressive and demanding and needy, his mind was quickly turning to more _pressing_ matters...

“Sweet Godric, Ron,” panted Harry. “I can’t get enough of you… Please don’t leave me tonight…”

But that, apparently, was the wrong thing to say. Ron kissed him one last time, ever so softly, and then leaned his forehead against his best mate’s and said quietly:

“You know we have to talk about that, Harry, don’t you? About where this is taking us?”


	19. I own you now

And the heart in Harry’s chest just fluttered wildly, panic recognizing the lethal gentleness in Ron’s voice, telling him unmistakably, this was too soon, there was no way Ron could choose him now, after they only just started tasting each other… they didn’t even make love yet, not properly, and he was about to lose him…!

“No, Ron, don’t… please, not yet…” Harry begged, suddenly frightened beyond belief that this was it; this was all he was ever going to get. But Ron was unrelenting; his words seeping in like a slow, merciless tide:

“We have to… I have to… I can’t mislead you, not you. I can’t be that much of a coward…. So… Potter,” he looked straight into his eyes and Harry was waiting for his verdict like a man on the gallows. “We come to this. You know I would do anything to be with you, Harry... I’d leave my wife, I’d face my family and the rest of the world defiant, I’d fucking marry you, if I could... but I cannot leave my kids. And I won’t.”

So now it was out in the open. And Harry’s world just went a little darker. He knew this was coming, he hoped he would be able to buy some time, but this was his Ron, unspoilt, brutal, his own man. Ron clearly saw how shell shocked his words had left him and he tried to explain almost pleadingly:

“Please, Harry, you’ve got to understand…. I would hate myself every time I’d look in the mirror if I walked away on them and in the end you’d also lose this man before you now. I can’t do it, it’s not in my nature to cut so deeply, to abandon my three little rays of sunshine, at least not yet, when they need me so… you will understand, I promise you will understand once you have your own….”

“I know,” said Harry quickly, not able to stand the pain in those deeply devoted eyes that stared at him from such proximity.

“I understand,” he added quietly, feeling like he’s just put a lid on his bottle of happiness and threw it away. But then there was the slightest quiver at the bottom of those blue eyes that pierced his heart… self-denial, a life time of it behind him and another life of it in front… for him and for Ron and for that priceless thing they shared… and to think he will never look into those eyes like this again, from this close, when they had but one heart and one mind – that derailed Harry entirely and set all his magic loose.

“I understand... and I will respect your decision,” he said quietly as if his whole existence reached the lowest point… and then the fragile dam broke and all the passion he had ever felt in his life erupted in a violent outburst. “But you must also understand that I need more, that this cannot end here! I will not try to force you to leave your kids and your family, because Merlin knows I don’t know what to do with a broken man, but _my God, Ron!_ \- you’re going to give me more! I cannot live without, not now, when you had me taste it, this cannot be it for us! I will take anything, I’ll do anything, live a lie, cheat, love my children and yours, anything, just don’t leave me! You have no idea what you do to me, you can’t throw what we have away, you can’t and I won’t let you!”

“Godric, Harry,” whispered Ron, clearly overwhelmed by the intensity of emotion reflecting in the green flame of Harry’s wild eyes. And Draco watching him just thought Potter finally went mad. Something must have happened to him in that blasted war, maybe a piece of the Dark Lord was still stuck somewhere inside him, because this man in front of him was clearly out of control in the darkest of ways.

“I need you, all right?!” Harry interrupted his lover feverishly. “I wake up needing you, I go to sleep needing you, I wander around sleepless _hopelessly_ needing you. I want you so bad, it aches. This love… it’s like acid… it’s eating me alive and you’re my only anti-dote. Sometimes when I don’t get my daily fix of Ron, it hurts so bad, I just wish you didn’t exist, so my life would be perfect and perfectly empty. I could do empty, what I can’t do, is without you. Please, Ron… I’m not beyond begging. Just give us a chance, love… I can’t imagine not ever doing this with you again. It will be the last the world will see of Harry Potter, if you deny me. There’s so much more I want to do with you, you have no idea… you haven’t got a clue in how many ways you undo me… I need you, I crave you, please don’t turn away….”

Finally Ron took pity on him, finally he did. It seemed like Harry was hanging on to him for dear life, when the lovely ginger brought them together and kissed him roughly. There was no place left for words, just raw need; cruel brutal display of aching love that plagued them both for too long.

“Merlin, Harry…” said Ron panting, between kisses that were leaving them breathless. “How could you ever think I’d leave you… as if I could… bloody hell, man… you just look at me and you’d have me follow you on my knees … you think you’re the only one who’s desperate for this?! We’ve been fucking in my mind since I was fourteen, I’m not about to let this float out of my hands… I came on to you first, remember? You’re never going to lose me, you’ll never be rid of me and if you want proof, you only need to ask…”

That stopped Harry dead in his track… a proof… something solid to hold on to, for all the long days and nights when his lover will be out of reach… “A proof?” he asked hopefully. “How could you possibly… _Ron_?”

One last, lust filled kiss and Ron smiled smugly.

“Oh, but I already did, my love… So, will you ask, Harry?” And with a heart in his throat, Harry Potter, the Saviour or the wizarding world went of his knees before the love of his life and asked; voice barely over a whisper, filled with fear of hope:

“Will you have me, Ron?”

And the ginger smiled once again, an unbelievable mixture of innocence and devilish spark, and took hold of Harry’s hand, pulling off his wedding ring in one fluid motion. Smile gone, he spoke plain and simple:

“I Ronald Billius Weasley, claim you, Harry James Potter, for myself. You’ve always had my heart and now I place my life in your hands. I love you and I always will. Yours, always.” As the last words echoed in the air, Harry watched dumbfounded, how the date of his wedding disappeared from the ring and was replaced with a shiny inscription of “Yours, always”, the very words Ron said to him the night before his wedding. And Ron slowly slid a ring back on his finger.

“Oh.My.God.,” Harry managed in a whisper, before a hot demanding kiss cut his words.

“You see, it was always there, this proof,” said Ron fiercely. “You started your marriage with _my_ ring, just like you wanted and that’s just what you got. I own you now, Potter!”

And Harry could do nothing but nod, heart in his chest about to explode, thinking only:

“He’s mine, he’s mine now…”

And then a thought occurred to him and he asked in a voice lined with incredulous hope: “Does your ring…?”

“Hell, yeah!” said Ron, adamant. “How could it be different? There’s nothing else for us, nothing that will make us feel complete. So you finish this, Harry, finish it the way it should have been from the start and set things right!”

“Sweet Godric...” whispered Harry, suddenly frightened that he will blunder this moment, this unexpected ultimate blessing his loving redhead was giving him out of his free will. His hand was shaking so bad, he was frightened he will ruin it all, but he managed to take hold of Ron’s left hand and he pulled the ring off his finger. He closed his eyes for a moment with precious jewellery in his closed fist, warm to the touch just as Ron always felt, and tried to gather his fleeing thoughts to do this right:

“I, Harry James Potter, love you, Ron Weasley, with all my heart. You’ll never know just how much. I will dedicate my life to make you happy for as long as you will have me. Yours, always,” he said in a shaky voice, still awed when Ron’s ring shone and blazing inscription appeared, just like it had on his own ring.

“Yours, always...” he whispered. “Mine, always.”

“As it should be,” said Ron simply and pulled him into one of his bear hugs. Harry didn’t even know he was crying until he felt wetness from his cheeks spread on Ron’s torso.

“Oh, God... I’m sorry... I shouldn’t... I will ruin everything...”

“This thing has a name, you know,” said Ron with unexpected gentleness. “It’s called hand-fasting and I’ve only heard about it from the stories of Elder days. It is for those who cannot get married, for those whose love would otherwise never come to pass. It is also one of the most powerful bonds two magical beings can share; it prints the magic of the people taking part in it right into each other. You don’t ever have to tell me again how you are doing. I will know. And so will you.”

“ _No, it’s not!”_ thought Draco in his hide-out wildly, unable and not willing to comprehend what just happened. “It’s not complete, _it is_ _not!_ There has to be a person present to confirm it, a third person...” And then his mind went blank when he realized _he_ was the third person, their witness, and that the magical bond between the two of his oldest adversaries was now truly complete. And at the same time it dawned on him that Ron _knew_.


	20. We're all done here

Somehow the redhead knew there was someone else present and Draco felt a shiver cut him through the core like a knife. An overwhelming mixture of feelings washed over him: fear of being discovered mingled with immense pain of being neglected and searing anger of being manipulated to participate and he could barely stop himself from launching at the cruel ginger creature that continued to ruin his life.  And there he was, at it again, kissing Potter into oblivion, making Draco want to wrap his long fingers around his long swan neck and _squeeze_ , and keep on squeezing hard while he was drinking from that heavenly mouth... He was truly destroyed now, fantasizing about killing Ron while fucking him... The end has come for Draco Malfoy as the world knew him. He was buried at the bottom of his own personal hell.

But for Harry it was heaven on Earth. He could never have imagined in a million years that this day will bring him everything he ever dreamed about. As he was lying in the embrace of his mate, he felt he could not ask for anything more. Right here, now, he felt complete.

“You’re beautiful,” he told his lover unabashed, not ashamed of expressing his feelings, aware that his words were barely able to reflect the bliss inside. “You made all my dreams come true, right there. Happiest moment of my life... How is it, that you always know how to fix me, how to make things right and make me feel so perfectly happy?” he wondered, truly in awe.

Ron chuckled softly: “Well, one must try one’s best.... I figured you didn’t have much love growing up and you don’t know how to handle it. So I figured out you need a little guidance, Merlin knows it took _me_ long enough to figure out how to do this properly. You see, love isn’t about possession; it’s something you can only have if you give it to someone.... And I guess you wouldn’t know much about that, gorgeous, so here’s a little lesson for you...” he leaned down and kissed his raven-haired mate on his eager lips.

Harry didn’t know how to stop this, how to stop himself. Seconds on that sensuous loving mouth brought him down to moaning and desperately wanting more.

“Please, Ron, we need to do this right... I want you, I want you all the way, I’m ready, I’m so ready...” he begged, greedy for his body, yearning to merge into one with that mesmerising man on the most intimate level.

“Merlin, Harry... “ said Ron panting, clearly distracted and just as anxious to go on, but with a bit of wits left on him. “We can’t... not here, anyway...”

“Oh, but I need to... I need you... Ron, please.... when then?” asked Harry, clearly frustrated and so needy he could barely manage a solid thought.

Ron clearly figured out, that this was not going in the direction he wanted it to go, if he kept on denying Harry at the same time as he was ravaging him with his tempting mouth, so he slowly let go and tried to calm himself enough to think clearly again. But Harry misunderstood, still fresh in his newly solidified love, he mistook his consideration for doubts.

“Fuck, Ron, I can’t believe you don’t want to do this with me!” he said with despair and frustration mingling in his voice. Redhead was taken by surprise, but tried to explain in vain: “It’s not that I don’t want to, Harry, it’s just...”

“Then why haven’t we done it before?” his mate impatiently cut through his words, sounding suspicious, thousand and one scenarios forming in his head as to why the gorgeous ginger wouldn’t want to go all the way with him. “You had me where you wanted me, you could have taken me anyway you pleased and yet you didn’t... not all the way. Why’s that, Ron, _why_?”

“I didn’t want to hurt you, all right?” yelled the redhead, a hint of anger mixed with frustration sparkling in his stormy eyes. “And, by gods, Harry, hurt you I would, if I took you the way I wanted to... I would have ravaged you into oblivion if I let myself go, trust me, none of us would have been the better for it now! Besides...”

“Besides, what?! What aren’t you telling me, Ron!?” Harry clung onto that word, sensing that it just might reveal the true reason behind’s his best-mate’s reluctance to take their relationship to another level.

Ron was clearly a bit embarrassed now. He wouldn’t look Harry in the eye and stared somewhere at the empty space behind him, which was, awkwardly enough, occupied by Draco, whom he could not see. “I wanted to give you a chance to get out... “ he said finally, still unable to look straight at Harry, staring at Draco instead giving the blond had a unique opportunity to see a fan of intertwined emotions reflect in his eyes.

“Get out of what... what do you mean, get out?!” The notion was so out-of-this world to Harry that he couldn’t, wouldn’t understand what the self-conscious ginger was referring to.

“You know, your way out, relatively unharmed, if you decided this was... not for you... that this was enough to just get this... _me_...  out of your system... “ shrugged Ron, the sudden flush in his cheeks indicating that he just became aware how unbelievable his words were in the light of Harry’s obvious affection, if not downright obsession with him.

“You... what... you _actually thought_... that I could... would want to get you _out of my system_... as _if not want you_ anymore....???” Harry was openly gapping now, unable to understand that someone who literally shone in the dark in his eyes thought so little of himself.

“Yeah... well, yeah, that was always a small option,” said Ron softly and added with a tiny attempt at humour in his voice. “But I hope that it isn’t anymore....”

“ _OhmyfuckingGod_ I can’t believe this...! I can’t fucking believe _you_ , Ronald Weasley! After all this time, how can you still sell yourself so short?! When did you last look at yourself in the mirror?! Have you got any idea... well, clearly not! You’re a bloody sex on two feet, Ron, I get hard these days just at the sight of ginger hair and it’s all because of you! You fuck with my mind beyond everything I thought humanly possible, I couldn’t get you out of my system if I let Voldemort bleed me to death! How could you think even for a second that I would even want to?! And why, for god’s sake, Ron, why!? Why would anyone ever want to be rid of you? Bloody hell, man, even your smell is addictive! How could think for a moment this could _ever_ be enough for me, when there’s so much of you to be had?! You really have no idea, do you...?”

And Draco could see it in the clear blue eyes, staring at him, that he really didn’t. As much as he hated to, he had to agree with Potter, Ron really was the most oblivious person on the surface of the planet and perhaps that was where his charm truly lied. He had no idea, he was not performing, putting a show, trying to charm people, he was just being himself, his apparently very _self-conscious_ self. And later Draco came to believe this was the moment when he had truly fallen in love with one Ron Weasley.

But Potter was not done with Weasley yet and Draco could only watched annoyed how he went on to turn his head gently to be able to look him in the eye and said with determination:

“Ronald Weasley, you may not know it yet, but I will make understand just how special and awesome you are. Why do you think I so desperately want to make you mine? In every way possible. For all the world to see. I don’t know how I’m going to do it yet, I don’t know when am I going to get into this thick ginger head of yours that you must give into me, that we’re meant to be together, that there’s no one more important or who I’d rather be with and that I’d love to scream it from the top of Astronomy tower if only you’d let me – but one day I will get there. If I could kill the most powerful dark wizard of our time and found a way back to life, I will have you know that it was all to be with you. That’s my true purpose in life, not killing Tom Riddle, but convincing _you_ , Ronald Weasley that you’re worthy of love in every sense of the way, not just as scraps of love of the Boy who lived, but of _my_ love, the love of one Harry Potter, the man behind the name who came to love you from the depth of his heart. By all that is sacred to me, Ron, I swear that you’re going to end up at my side, out in the open, for everyone to see. I don’t care if it takes me a life-time, your gravestone is going to say Ronald Billius Weasley Potter and I’m going to be right beside you in the ground!”

“Mad, mad as the Lovegoods!” thought Draco desperately, watching Ron’s blue gaze sink into the green oblivion of Harry’s brilliant eyes, no sign of fear at these eerie words, as if he was entirely at peace with the prospect of lying dead next to his lover.

“Tonight, then,” was Ron’s only response, his voice ragged, his eyes as bright as the starry night. “We’ll do this tonight...  it will be like our wedding night... wherever you want... I don’t care... I don’t care anymore... I just want to be with you.”

“Godric, Ron, I love you!” whispered Harry, unable to keep his enthusiasm to himself. This sudden surrender truly made him feel loved and appreciated as he was fully aware that Ron would have never given in so quickly if it was not something he wanted as well. He knew he really should run off to make arrangement for a night in front of him, as it was clear, Ron was going to let him run the show, but he just couldn’t disconnect himself from his dream-come-true life-mate, so starved he was of his overwhelming presence, of this incredible feeling of being able to freely display and consume love he kept to himself for too long.

Finally it was Ron who pushed him away softly, making him whimper in the sense of loss and arousal, as he said panting and slightly dishevelled looking: “We really should be going, love...” And he added between Harry’s kisses that just wouldn’t stop: “It’s getting dark... if you want tonight to be our night, we should get going... you must go tell Ginny... something... whatever... something she’ll believe and when you’re ready, come and find me... I already did my part...”

Talk of Ginny finally made Harry aware, somewhat painfully, that there was a world outside of this bliss they’ve made for themselves .

"What do you mean, you already did your part?” he asked somewhat distracted, as he finally managed to unglue himself from his lover and looked, really looked at himself – God, what a mess he was, how could Ron possibly find him attractive like this!?

“I went to talk to Hermione after the classes,” said Ron matter-of-factly and Harry froze.

“You did what?!” he asked incredulously feeling a cold hand grab him by his heart. If Hermione was to find out too soon...

“Well, yeah, I thought it best to get it over with in case I might be somewhat... indisposed later,” Ron smiled shyly and Harry couldn’t stop himself from sighing... he couldn’t blame him, Ron knew nothing of his elaborate plans....

“Well, it turns out, she’s still at the continent, doing her thing, so when I fire-called her, she was surrounded by a million geeky looking Ministry types. So I just told her that I’m going out with you to celebrate my first day at school and we agreed to talk tomorrow in the evening, cause there’s more school for me in the morning,” he smiled at Harry’s suddenly bright and happy face.

“And I called mom and the kids are doing great, wreaking havoc all over the Burrow, making mom absolutely spare with joy and worry. Rose came to blow me a kiss, Freddie was out, tormenting the gnomes and Hugo didn’t want to blow me a kiss in case it burned, so I’m getting double when I get home.”

The pride and joy were truly radiating from the depth of his eyes and for once Harry couldn’t blame him for not wanting to leave it all behind – if it was making his Ron so happy, then it must be good, it must be right.

“So...” he looked at Harry with bright eyes and rolled them up almost at the same time. “Seriously, man, you can’t go meet Ginny like this, you look positively shagged out! She’ll ground you and damage me beyond repair, should she ever lay eyes on you looking like this.... though I must admit you look absolutely edible...” he chuckled softly and couldn’t resist licking a small trail of green left by the grass from his ear down his jaw.

He saw a feral look in Harry’s eyes and smiled with mocked innocence: “No worries, I’ll be a good boy from now on, I promise... Professor Potter...” and he found himself knocked against the rock once again with insatiable raven-haired youth glued at his lips as if he entirely forgot they were supposed to be leaving. “Godric have mercy on my soul, Potter, you are ever so randy...” he managed a laugh and a small moan escaped him when Harry’s tongue got the better of him.

“Don’t... you... ever... _ever_...  use Professor on me... unless you want to be... fucked into the ground... on the spot, Weasley...” Harry threatened between lascivious kisses, meaning every word of it as for some reason he found it incredibly erotic when Ron called him like this. It was all wrong and so right at the same time, he couldn’t explain it, it just turned him on “ _like a motherfucker_ ”, as his dirty-mouthed mate liked to put it.

“Mmmm.... Potter.... you’re a dream....,” sighed Ron happily and then willed himself to focus, to get the hell out of here, as Harry clearly was in no hurry and he could already feel one of his palms sneaking down between his legs and rubbing gently... making him so undone... and he couldn’t have that here, for more reasons than one. “Stop it.... fuck, Harry, stop it now.... shush, away with you, be gone...” he finally managed to push him away gently, but still smiling, unaware of how tempting he looked all dishevelled, with small twigs in his flaming hair and mouth, swollen from the overdose of kissing.

Dead set on ignoring Harry’s desperate protests, he pulled him up by the hand and started to gather their scattered clothes in the rapidly approaching dusk.

“C’mon... don’t just stand there, we really need to be going....!” he urged his mate, unaware that his still half-naked form left Harry without a fully functioning brain. “Here, your glasses.... oups, I believe then might have gone a bit damaged on the set, _really_ Potter, one would think that after all these years you’d know how to take better care of them.... _Reparo_!... here you go, that’s fixed.... let me clean you up and fix those...” As Harry was too busy being amazed how good was Ron in getting everything in order and how good, no, _delicious_ he managed to look doing it, it took him a while to figure it out, that Ron didn’t seem to have a wand on him.

“How the hell... “ he began and was swept away when suddenly an array of scattered buttons rained on him, arranging themselves neatly on his clothes and before he knew it, he was fully dressed and clean as a the fresh winter’s day. His eyes went as big as galleons and he asked incredulously: “Ron? How...?”

“Oh, well, you know I had plenty of time and opportunity to practice wandless magic,” Ron actually managed to blush a little and then added as if wanting to apologize, “I know you can do it and I didn't want to be left behind. And I'll have you know, it’s hard to “ _swish and flick_ ” once you have three little ones hung-up on you, standing knee-deep in a mess to match the ruins of Hogwarts,” he shrugged, trying to sound matter-of-factly, but clearly satisfied with himself in the view of Harry’s evident shock.

Clearly Ron had no idea, how strong one’s magic had to be to be able to perform it wandlessly as there were wizards and witches who never managed a single chore without their wand – and here he was, this young unassuming man, making the world move around him at the whim of his hands alone, as if it there was hardly any other way to do magic.

When Harry just won’t stop gapping, Ron rolled up his eyes and tapped his large fist on his chest a couple of times in a sudden flush of pride and embarrassment: “Hello, Potter?! Molly Weasley’s son here! What did you expect of me?!”

“Nothing but the best indeed…” said Harry softly and then couldn’t stop himself from erupting: “You’re amazing!” A sudden wave of pride and joy washed over him that _this_ was his life-mate; that this person was going to stand next to him in the ranks of Aurors and make it seem all so easy and worthwhile.

“Well, the wand is somewhere in the clothes _someone_ so happily tore from me and while it remains hidden I couldn’t possibly have you running around the Forbidden forest half naked, Potter, you might corrupt the poor young centaurs!” Ron replied, tongue-in-cheek and seconds later the thought of the rough centaurs being somehow corrupted by Harry’s naked torso had them both bending over in laughter.

“Stop it, Weasley...honestly... you’re killing me, man...” said Harry breathless, as he couldn’t even look at Ron, giggling like a madman, without falling into another laughing fit. “Mental, you are... young centaurs, indeed... oh, my word, Weasley, if I didn’t love you already, this would be enough to fall head over heels with you... no one makes me fall apart like you do!” Harry collapsed next to his best mate, still positively overwhelmed.

“Mmmmm... let’s have a taste of that falling apart before you go, Potter,” said the ginger with a naughty spark in his eyes and cupped his face between his large hands unexpectedly, his soft mouth once again set on stealing the life out of him. “Ron...” Harry didn’t manage a single coherent thought when he was attached to that heavenly mouth.

“Potter, you fall apart beautifully,” whispered the cursed redhead in his husky bedroom voice that made Harry yelp in helpless arousal as those sinful lips finally left him. “Let’s save some of that falling apart for tonight, shall we?” the ginger moved away, in an unmistakable attempt to put some distance between himself and his mate, who looked positively ready to launch himself at him.

“You’re a bloody tease, that’s what you are, Weasley,” whimpered Harry, his eyes glued to the perfect male specimen, leaning backwards on his elbows against a mossy rock, slightly out of breath, still with a provocative look in his blue eyes. Ron was blissfully unaware that his ginger head leaned so close to a certain Malfoy that it sent the blond’s heart straight into an overdrive. When the intoxicating scent of Ron hit him full on and a loose strand of soft flaming hair accidently caressed his skin, Draco knew he couldn't move, even if he risked getting discovered practically breathing down Ron’s neck. This was too precious.

“Then you better get going and get us a place, preferably before the night is over, Potter... or should I wait around for the centaurs?” said Ron with his slow and sexy smile that stirred Harry into action like nothing else could.

“No... God... you....argghhh, don’t move, just don’t you move... I’ll be back in half an hour and remember... I know how to find you now, so don’t even consider going anywhere...”

“As if I could, love... “ added Ron softly. “Nah, I’ll be here, a good boy, Prof... Harry,” he quickly corrected himself at the sight of a feral look in the brilliant green eyes. “Growing roots as we speak... Just hurry, you don’t want to give me a cold!”

Harry took him in with his eyes one last time, unable to fathom that he’ll finally be able to claim his prize and when Ron blew him a kiss, he closed his eyes, lest he splinch himself. That man was just too much for him.

When he disappeared Ron closed his eyes and leaned back on his elbows, turning his pretty freckled face up in the sky and Draco’s heart effectively stopped. He was pulled towards him like a magnet, just inches away, staring down at the milky skin, galaxies of freckles, that blasted soft curve of a mouth... and then the blue eyes opened and Ron stared straight at him.

“Hi, Malfoy,” he said matter-of-factly, “You can come out now, I think we’re all done here.”


	21. Painted on my heart

_“I've still got your face, painted on my heart_   
_Scrawled upon my soul, etched upon my memory baby_   
  
_I've got your kiss, still burning on my lips_   
_The touch of your fingertips, this love so deep inside of me, baby…”_

Painted on my heart, The Cult

 

Draco’s first instinct was to draw a wand. This was Weasley after all, his life-long adversary, if not flat out enemy, all in all a dangerous man, who proved time and time again, that if you want to beat him, you have to be fast and smart, because any hesitation might just be the last thing you did in this life.

But the redhead was unarmed, his wand still somewhere in the now moonlit lawn and even though he somehow, miraculously, knew that Draco was there, the blond was still pretty sure he couldn’t see him. Besides – who was he kidding? He wouldn’t hurt Weasley, he couldn’t, even if that meant risking his own life. He was… he didn’t know what he was… love was such a foreign concept to one Draco Malfoy that it made his skin crawl just thinking about it, but he knew full well that what he felt towards Ron Weasley outgrew the frame of lust long time ago. He needed some time to think, preferably away from this blasted ginger, as the man was clearly an awful influence on his mental capacity. Every time Draco was around him these days, his brain promptly decided to go on a break, leaving his most inappropriate body parts in control. Like his hands, who desperately wanted to touch the creamy skin and play with the flaming hair. Yep, he was _that_ fucked up. In deep shit, no where to run.

“C’mon, Malfoy, preferably tonight, I haven’t got all night, as you are well aware….” he heard the redhead’s warm voice, a strange mixture of boredom, irritation and teasing. “If Harry finds you here, you’ll be on the milk cartons and “Missing” posters all over the country by tomorrow, so hurry up!”

Well, there was nothing for it now, Weasley knew he was here, he was going to have to show his face and _ohblastedSalazaarandhissnake_ , how did he _ever_ end up looking like this – he was in such a state that he was sure he could make Hagrid look dashing! Desperate not to let the ginger see him this way, he tried to perform some quick cleaning spells to make his dishevelled appearance a tad less shocking, but then he heard Ron chuckle and it fuelled his temper like petrol on fire.

“Oh, sweet, Malfoy… getting all nice and dandy for me… there’s really no need to, you know… I like you better this way...” said Ron somewhat enigmatically, mocking in his voice mingled with hard disarming sincerity, and Draco, strangely annoyed and comforted by these words finally ended the concealing spell.

“Finite incantatem,” he whispered and there he was, eye to eye to one Ron Weasley, who stared at him with an unfathomable look in his impossibly deep blue eyes.

For a moment, Draco was speechless. Weasley was reading him like a book and he couldn’t have that. He tried to gather his fleeing thoughts with those eyes on him and when Ron slowly arched his eye-brow as in: _“Well, let’s see what is this all about…”_ , Draco found out under that provoking look, that there was still fight left in him. He straightened himself to his full height, which left him taller than the redhead was at the moment, still leaning casually onto the rock - and Draco Malfoy finally spoke with as much disdain and disinterest as he could muster under the circumstances:

“So… you and Potty…” he said with a slow drawl, surprising himself pleasantly with the sound of familiar Malfoyian confidence he didn’t really feel while his appearance was in such a disarray. Ron said nothing. He simply continued to observe him thoroughly with his dashing blue eyes, taking him apart in more ways than one.

“I would have thought it happened years ago, of course,” continued Draco, careful to accentuate malice in his voice. “Given how hung-up on him you always were, forever following him around like a faithful puppy…” A spark rose from those incredible blue eyes, but still Ron said nothing and Draco was beginning to feel increasingly helpless and frustrated, because for once, he wasn’t able to break under the guarded surface of his composure, he couldn’t provoke him, he couldn’t even figure him out.

“So instead you chose to save yourself for the wedding night in a true Gryffindor fashion, how noble of you!” he snarled at him with all the bitterness he could transform into mocking and a glint of surprise in the blue ponds told him, that Ron didn’t know he was there.

But instead of exploding, like Draco hoped he would, he just grunted quietly: “Not his wedding night, his stag night…” The redhead corrected him so pointedly as if he wanted to make sure he understood that there was a difference. So Draco exploded instead:

“His wedding night, his stag night, what’s the bloody difference, who the hell cares!” he seethed angrily and literally felt frustration and a strange sense of longing seeping into his body. He didn’t know how much longer can he stare in the beautiful freckled face and throw insults at him, when all he wanted was to get closer, touch those damn freckles and see if they leave a trail of golden specks on his fingers… God, did he _ever_ need to get the hell out of here, close this argument and close it fast, put the ginger bastard in his place and just go home and wank the screams out of himself. He felt his self-control slipping, slipping fast and he knew he was soon going to lose what little the upper hand he had won himself. So he gathered all the composure he ever had and spoke with what sounded like calculating coldness:

“Who cares indeed… except for… oh, let’s say the entire wizarding population of England… it would all look extremely _appealing_ on the cover of the Daily Prophet, don’t you agree?” he arched his eyebrow with a cold smile in a cocky manner that went so well with his surname. “The Boy-who-lived, the wizarding prodigy, cheating on his wife-soon-to-be-mother-of-his-child with her very own brother! Holly Potter seduced by his wife’s pervy very-much-married brother! Imagine the scandal, imagine the headlines… _glorious_ … so much so, in fact, that I might be inclined to write some _myself!_ ” he delivered his bitter blow in a cruel voice, not at all beyond considering to actually go through with his threat. Anything to hurt Potter, anything to knock him off his pedestal!

For a long moment there was silence, a small fraction of time when he felt he had actually won – and then Ron threw his head backward and positively howled with laughter, making it echo eerily in the shadow-crept forest. Draco was flabbergasted – not only did Weasley clearly _not buy_ his bluff, he was apparently having the laugh of a life-time at his expense!

“Oh, my fucking word, Malfoy… now, that you put it this way…” he said, still shaking with laughter, “I might even be tempted to buy that rot of a newspaper myself!” And he once again roared in laughter that effectively drained all of Draco’s remaining strength straight into the ground.

“Stop it!” demanded the blond youth coldly, but apparently he could hardly get through to the redhead who seemed to be enjoying a time of his life. “Stop it!” he seethed louder, because suddenly he couldn’t stand it anymore, this solid proof of mocking and humiliation. Malfoy’s _didn’t do_ humiliation, at least not the receiving end of it.

“Stop it?!” finally managed Ron through what looked like tears of laughter. “ _Stop it_?! Sweet Merlin, Malfoy, you’re a piece of work, aren’t you?! Stop it...” he repeated for one last time, wiping his eyes with his fingers and then suddenly he was on him, knocking him down like a hurricane and cupping his face between his large palms painfully. From this close up his height was overwhelming, his strength magnificent, his eyes fierce.

Draco has never in his life felt so helpless, so trapped and so alive. Every fibre in his body was pulsating with hot molten mixture of unrecognizable feelings and impossible arousal and he felt himself surrender to those incredible blue eyes without even attempting a fight. But Ron was unaware of the havoc he was leaving in his trail inside Draco. His captivating face was suddenly close, much to close to Draco’s, his voice was raspy and deep as if he’d been shouting, his warm breath caressing Draco’s skin and strangely at odds with his cold words:

“ _You_ stop it, Malfoy, you started it! But now you will shut up like a good boy and listen to _me._ You’re not going anywhere with this story and you know it. You wouldn’t live long enough for the print to dry. And what were you going to tell them anyway: _Oh, I caught Potter and Weasley shagging in the Forbidden forest and I enjoyed it so much, that I came all over myself_...” he said with glee, watching his childhood enemy’s face contort in shame and disgust. “Who’s the perv _now_ , Malfoy?” Ron said with uncharacteristic wilderness, his voice spreading pure undiluted poison and Draco closed his eyes for a moment, unable to watch his own reflection sink in those fierce eyes.

“No one is going to believe that load of crap coming from you, Malfoy, you know that. Not with the history of hatred and false accusations you have with Harry!” he destroyed the last shreds of confidence in one brutal blow. “Do you really think I’d let you stay once I figured out you were here, if I thought you were any danger to us at all?! I let you stay, because you _know_ as well as I do how things work with hand-fasting - Harry and I needed a witness and you did your job just fine, thanks very much for that! In fact, when you did not leave, I assumed you approve!” he smiled at him coldly and Draco stared into the deep blue and wondered how come his stupid longing heart didn’t stop dead at this man’s unbearable cruelty.

“Now, should it ever occur in your pretty little head to take this story to my wife or my sister, be prepared to get hexed from here to the Dark ages, because _no way in hell_ is my wife _ever_ going to take your word over mine; and Ginny, Malfoy, _Ginny_ will simply evaporate you until there’s no sign of your existence left. Just you try saying a word against Harry to her, she worships the floor he stands on! I’ll make a point of denying it all and I will make sure the whole wide world finds out why Draco Malfoy never looks at the same woman twice. Or, for that matter, _doesn’t look at women at all_...” he added with malice and when Draco’s pale face went even a shade whiter, he knew he hit the nail on the head.

“And then...” he added pointedly, his blue eyes ablaze and focused on Draco’s face as if he wanted to make sure the blond understood every word. “Then I’ll blow this fragile body of yours together with your arrogant attitude to _smithereens_. By myself. Are we clear, snake?”

Draco was now breathing rapidly; fear, excitement and out-of-this-world feeling of desire surging through him like a volcanic avalanche.

“And you can’t possible imagine what I’d do to you, if you ever tried to blackmail Harry,” Ron said softly as if he’d be sorry in advance for a fool that would ever attempt something as crazy as that. “But... I know you won’t...” he added, his voice suddenly deep and rich as honey and Draco was glad he was being pinned down as it was, because he’d be sure to collapse when redhead’s sexy deep voice reverberated through his very core. “I know you won’t, cause I know what you want, Draco Malfoy… You know I could hex you, but why bother, when there’s so much more to me than magic…” Ron whispered, his hot breath caressing Draco’s ear until the blond cared for nothing else just this warm gasps of life making him burn on the inside.

Draco closed his eyes once more in a desperate attempt to regain his disintegrated composure, to come up with a clever answer, _any_ answer... but he found out he was void of everything but overwhelming monstrous desire, consuming him like Fiendfyre. And when he opened his eyes next he knew there was really one thing he could do.

“I hate you…” he whispered helplessly and then it was too late and Draco Malfoy was kissing Ronald Weasley with everything he had.


	22. You're killing me...

The years seemed to have melted away and he was once again a 14-year-old boy standing in a abandoned corridor with his back against his cronies, flushed with unexpected consuming desire, claiming what should be rightfully his, his lips begging for attention, _any_ kind of attention and finally the soft warm mouth responded, kiss by kiss matching his passion until a wave after wave of pure pleasure traveled down his body. He heard himself moan and beg for “ _more_ ” and “ _don’t stop, Ron...more... oh, god, yessss_ ” as those blasphemous lips ravaged his pride and consumed his soul until Draco Malfoy was no more and only the aching, desperately needy man clung to the force of nature that was Ron Weasley.

And there really was nothing he could do. Draco Malfoy was being claimed and marked by his rightful owner and he finally belonged. His body belonged with this magnificent muscled form, his heart belonged near that chest where it felt it’s echo returned so loudly, his kisses, _all_ the kisses he’s been saving for years since that first one, belonged to that hot greedy mouth that was taking and giving everything, no reservations, no room for anything but that powerful surge of life and lust between them. Yes, Draco belonged as he was ever going to belong to anyone in his life and it didn’t even matter that his owner didn’t want him.

He knew it cannot last and yet his heart was whispering with every feverish kiss “ _one more, oh, please, god, just one more..._ ”. He couldn’t feel the rough floor under his back or the long fingers brutally tight, tangled in his hair, all that was real was that delicious soft tongue intricately dancing with his, greedy mouth making his lips swollen and gently caressing his sensitive chin, ragged breath in his ear with a barely audible “ _fuck, Draco..._ ” and then more kisses down his long pearl-white neck, branding him with love-bites and finally sucking on his pulse and collar bones that made him yelp out loud.

And maybe it was the overwhelming intensity and neediness in that yelp that finally brought Ron to senses. He moved away so fast as if he got burned and Draco actually whimpered. He couldn’t understand what he had done to have lost him, he just needed a moment longer, he was so close to release that he felt almost detached from his own body, his head spinning and his hips arching upwards, desperate for _moremoremore_ of that magnificent man.

“Fuck, goddamit, Draco... shit...” the look in Ron’s eyes was bewildered as if he couldn’t understand that he’d let himself go so spectacularly. Draco closed his eyes, unable to face the world that held so much cruelty for him on this blasted day, barely aware that he was shivering in a cold night air.

“Man, oh, man... I really should hex you, you know...” Ron was shaking his head as if he couldn’t believe himself what the blond almost made him do.

“Then do,” said Draco softly, his eyes suddenly open, reflecting the moonlight with a silver glow. “Hex me, Ron, give me something, I’ll take anything from you, just don’t...”

“Shut up, you stupid git!” said Ron roughly, but there was no malice in his voice, mere confusion. His chest was still rising rapidly from their violent exchange of passion and he couldn’t take his eyes of the Slytherin, who lay still in the moonlight, impossibly beautiful, his body still tense almost to the point of breaking, with his silver gaze still worshiping Ron’s face.

He knew he shouldn’t, he knew it was going to complicate his life infinitely, as if it wasn’t complex enough, and he really loved Harry with all his heart... and yet, he couldn’t leave him lying like that, abandoned, like no one cared, like he didn’t. The primal pull between them was undeniable, old magic bringing them to one another so strong he almost saw the invisible strings draw him closer until he was once again kneeling next to the panting Draco Malfoy, shivering in the cold, trembling under his touch.

“Bloody hell, Malfoy...” he spoke gently as if he couldn’t bring himself to hurt the blond, lying in front of him as vulnerable as he would ever see him. “Just how badly do you need it…?”

“Please,” whispered Draco and sunk his long white fingers into his fiery hair just like he wanted to do the whole day, his whole life, and he pulled him closer. “Please, Ron, please...”

And the lovely ginger once again succumbed to the temptation that resided inside him ever since he first drank the innocence from the lips of one Draco Malfoy. His sensuous lips covered Draco’s once more, licking and teasing and pleasing and his skilled fingers ran down his body, discovering a million sensitive spots in a way that made the blond moan and beg desperately.

Draco knew that was it. Potter will be here soon and he will have lost this game for good, like he always did when he went up against the raven-haired Gryffindor. But the redhead was here now, with him, and in those stolen moments Draco was giving him his best, his all. He put everything he had in those precious seconds, all his longing, the desire, his craving to be claimed, everything he truly honestly felt in his heart for that impossible ginger that complicated his life so intricately, giving it meaning like only he knew how.

When he finally felt his hands _there_ , between his legs, where he was waiting for him all this time, he lost control of his body. Soft breath caressed his ears as Ron whispered gentle words of admiration in a strained voice “ _god, you’re beautiful, Draco, you’re gonna come for me, my gorgeous silver snake_ ”, long fingers wrapped around his shaft with vicious tenderness and Draco rubbed himself against them desperately with a string of broken pleas on his lips as he did so many times in his fantasies. His silver eyes were wide open, reflecting the moonlight, no longer part of this world, the body moving in a symphony of spasms written just for him and finally, finally his torture came to an end in a crescendo of screams and profanities mixed with proclamations of love, he couldn’t remember afterwards, as he was at last allowed to finish in the large hands of his generous lover. Draco might have died there just a little.

As he lied there, utterly spent, with his heart still thumping wildly, bliss spreading over his body like a warm tide, his only sane thought focused on a hot muscled body and a scent of silken hair that clung to him tightly, giving him a grip in this reality he had for a while traded for another. Draco never knew sex could be like this. And it wasn’t even... they didn’t even... and then his string of thoughts was roughly interrupted by a large hand covering his mouth and he understood when he heard a familiar voice he came to loathe from the bottom of his heart:

“Ron?”

Potter was back. _Motherfucking_ Potter was back to steal his moment and his man once again.

“Not a word,” hissed Ron in his ear, “let me handle this.”

In one long fluent motion he got up, his torso still naked and he matter-of-factly pulled his discarded shirt over Draco’s exposed skin, covering him from the unwelcome eyes, and sinking him from head to toe into that unmistakable “ _Ron_ ” scent that Draco came to associate with longing and happiness. He inhaled the warmth and the aphrodisiac smell deeply, not caring for anything in this world as long as he was allowed to lie in the shelter of it, feeling warm, content and simply happy. In this small world, shrunk to the confines of Ron’s shirt, Draco felt at home and complete.

“I must have dozed away,” Ron mumbled as if he only just woke up and Draco smiled into the fabric of his shelter at the curious thought of when and why did the ginger Gryffindor managed to become such an accomplished liar.

“Must have been some dream,” said Harry pointedly as the contour of Ron’s body rose in the moonlight, the bulge in his pants unmistakable.

“It’s all for you, love,” said Ron softly and Draco bit his lip bloody in a sudden sting of realization, that the redhead indeed gave him nothing but his own release. “But only if you help me _Accio_! my goddamn wand!” the redhead sulked at Harry. “You bloody well know that the wand is one of those things you can’t summon without having one on you, and I couldn’t find the damn thing in the bushes! Besides, it took you forever to get here, you’re lucky my bits didn’t freeze off! Did Ginny give you a hard time?”

 _“My, my, Weasley, how very Slytherin of you – redirecting attention by shifting blame, who would have thought you had it in you...”_ Draco couldn’t help but smile... Indeed, the ginger was full of surprises tonight.

“Well, yes... and no...” smiled Harry blissfully, because he wouldn’t let an army of Death Eaters stop him that night. “I told her that you and I are going for a drink to celebrate your return to school and she sulked a little, so I promised that I will be home early tomorrow like a good husband and fussed around her so much, she all but threw me out and went to stay at the Burrow!” he had to laugh at Ron’s appalled expression. “What?! Fight fire with fire, they say... I know she’s your sister, but bloody hell, man, she can be a bit overly attached from time to time and tonight, Ron, tonight is for _me_. I’ve waited long enough, tonight I’d look Dumbledore in the eye and lie if that’s what it took to get you, you know that...” he said fiercely and Ron knew it would not do to argue.

“And the right thing you did, too...” the ginger whispered and when a moment of silence ensued for just a bit too long, Draco clenched his fists in realization they were kissing.

“Fuck, Ron, let’s get out of here...” Harry’s voice was ragged and broken as if he was just given something that overwhelmed him, the neediness in it unmistakable.

“You get my wand... I’ll get my robes... and we’ll do a side-by-side apparition... as long as you promise not to splinch... any important bits off...” smiled the redhead naughtily into his mouth, not quite letting go yet and the raven-haired youth just couldn’t summon the wand fast enough.

Draco heard Ron looming through the undergrowth and seconds later he kneeled down next to him.

“Good boy, Malfoy.... keep the shirt, it won’t do to save you from Harry only to kill you with pneumonia...” he whispered. Grabbing his robes and pulling them on in haste, he looked at Draco’s crouched form one more time with a curious expression in his unfathomable eyes.

“And for Merlin’s sake, next time you do the concealment charm, try not to stand so damn close... I could feel your breath on me and the smell of you, Malfoy...” – he leaned forward and breathed in as if he was trying to remember it and Draco drowned in his midnight blue eyes – “It’s unbelievable... so you... intoxicating… hot and sexy... just bloody _fantastic_!”

A soft brush of fingers over the cheekbones and Ron was gone, accompanied by an unmistakable sound of disapparation. Yet Draco continued to lie motionless, his eyes fixed onto unknown visions in front of him, buried in the sensual smell of Ron’s shirt, broken by his unexpected gentleness.

“You’re killing me...” he finally whispered softly as a pair of solitary tears rolled down his cheeks.


	23. Love granted...

_“Today I introduced myself to my own feelings_

_In silent agony after all these years, they spoke to me_

_After all these years..._

_Maybe I always knew my fragile dreams would be broken_

_for you...”_

Fragile dreams, Anathema

 

Harry woke up broken up as never before. Everything hurt, the muscles he didn’t know he had were aching and he was raw on the places that he never thought possible. He was possibly also the happiest man alive. Dead tired, the happiness was still bubbling inside him to the point that it put a smile on his face before he even fully stirred out of his dreams. He didn’t even have to open his eyes to feel _him_ lying next to his aching body, his reason for such overwhelming joy, stretched like a lion in savannah, taking up three quarters of the bed, snoring with abandon and radiating so much heat that it warmed up his heart as well as his body. Ron fell asleep with his arm stretched protectively over Harry and though it was now weighing a ton of dead weight, Harry would not have moved it for the world, not even if it left a dent in his bone, which he began suspect that it actually might.

He didn’t want to move, because this, _they_ were just too perfect and shattering the illusion that it’s going to last was inevitably going to be painful. Just a few moments longer… he can pretend with his eyes closed that they don’t have to be anywhere and dream of that wonderful man that just gave him the best night in his entire existence. God, Ron was an animal…

They hardly made it into the lobby of number 12 Grimmauld place, when his fiery lover had him knocked against the wall, his large hands pinning Harry’s arms above his head. And Harry couldn’t give a damn about getting somewhere more comfortable once the incredible mouth found out his weak spots, took him hostage and began its torturous path down his body. He was once again at the mercy of his powerful mate and he was loving every minute of it.

A mountain of hard muscle had him pressed against a solid wall and in contrast his tongue was brushing slowly and oh, ever so gently over his lips, nibbling at his earlobes and sliding down his neck that it left him shivering, gasping, with buckling knees and insides of made of jelly. Harry didn’t think it was humanly possible to want someone as much as he wanted this man in that moment.

“Let go of me, I want to touch you,” he begged, but the redhead was having none of it.

“Like hell you do… You’re not touching me, Potter, or I swear I’m leaving,” Ron whispered and looking provokingly into his eyes he deliberately tore his robes apart, splitting the fabric to shreds. As Harry’s white skin glowed from the dark backgrounds, he watched Ron’s eyes travel over every inch on his milky white torso, lean and muscled from everyday practice and it felt every bit as if he was touching him already.

“Godric, Potter, you’re mine…” he moaned and the sight of possessive lust in his eyes did more to fuel Harry’s desire than the most elaborate foreplay. The redhead’s eyes still travelled slowly over Harry’s tense body, as if he couldn’t decide where to start, when he suddenly leaned closer and demanded fiercely: “Say that you’re mine, Harry, I wanna hear you say it…”

“I’m yours, all yours… oh, God…. nothing but yours…please, Ron… ” Harry whispered in a faltering voice as the smart tongue sought out his nubs and began rubbing expertly, sucking and slurping and biting until they were hard and wet and dark and Harry was a quivering mess.

“Mine at last… at my mercy…. Oh, the things I’m gonna do to you… Harry, love…” And Harry could only helplessly watch, digging his fingers into the wall behind him, when the magnificent ginger sunk down on his knees in front of him and began worshiping his body… and this treacherous thing seemed to have recognized its master as he sure as hell had no control over it anymore.

He knew he couldn’t last when Ron’s freckled cheek slowly rubbed against the fabric covering of his pants between his legs, hot and sensitive and pulsing with a want to release… he was almost ready to come as he was, staring at his beautiful lover living out his fantasies.

“You promised…” he panted, “God, Ron… you promised… all the way…”

His only answer was a deep grunt and more expert rubbing, making him so undone, so ready… Finally with a quick flick of smart fingers his cock was released from his confines and suddenly blue eyes were staring straight at him with a well-known dark spark in them that sent him in a shiver of expectation.

“Oh, Potter….” He sighed a breath of warm air over his sensitive area and Harry couldn’t stop himself from moaning. “You should be so lucky, that I’d only want to do this once... love…” He swallowed him whole, making Harry’s bones turn to rubber; devoured him time and time again, until Harry was begging incoherently, hopelessly trying to get more of that heavenly mouth on him to get his release anyway he could. But Ron would have none of it. His large hands cupped his hipbones, controlling his movements and at the same time gently exploring the round buns of Harry’s arse, squeezing, caressing, probing.

“We have all night,” he told him, “You’re mine… you said so yourself… and I’ll have you anyway I please… You have yet to see what “ _mine_ ” means… I’ve waited long enough… right now, I want to drink from you, I think…” he said in a soft merciless voice and his warm generous mouth engulfed him all, efficiently ending any coherent thought, any objection, his existence in this reality.

“Ron, I can’t… I can’t stop myself…” he pleaded, “Please let me…” and when the ginger on his knees in front of him finally closed his eyes in agreement, Harry sunk his fingers in his flaming hair and began fucking his mouth in abandon. As it was, it only took moments. This was his Ron after all, his ultimate fantasy come to life and he couldn't hold back any longer, he couldn't keep it in.

“ _Sweetmarymotherofgod_ , Ron... fucking bastard, please... don't... don’t stop now… so close... baby, so close... now, _merlinandfuckingchrist_ , Ron, fuck...-”

Harry came with a scream and would have collapsed in the same moment, if it wasn't for the large hands on him, still holding on to his hips, still gently massaging his buttocks and already travelling upwards across his body as Ron slowly got up and cupped his face between the palms of his hands kissing him fiercely, giving him a taste of himself.

Harry was afraid to close eyes lest this vision disappear and he felt him, pressed against him, still hard and hot, with pleading in those ocean blue eyes.

“Please, Harry… “ he said with a need in his voice, “My turn now… I’ve been waiting so long….”

“Yes, oh, god, yes, love… anywhere you want… just let me start breathing again,” smiled Harry blissfully and at the same time kissed him eagerly, because just thinking that he’ll once again lay eyes on that magnificent body and won’t have to look away, but will be allowed to touch it, to play with it… that for Harry was an aphrodisiac beyond compare.

“In front of the fireplace, I think…” said Ron softly, kissing his face and neck all over, spoiling him with gentleness that made his head spin and he wasn’t able to think clearly. “The one in the master bedroom… your bedroom, Harry… you’re the master now… yes, I think that one will do… I could never look at that place without fantasising of lying down and… getting comfortable there… that big polar bear fur just does it for me…”

And Harry couldn’t take him up fast enough. He actually thought about apparating them, that’s how eager he was, but Ron had a better idea. They walked up what felt like a million stairs together, stopping every few stairs to kiss and cuddle and by the time they made it to the master bedroom, a 21-year-old hormone-crazed head-over-heals in love Harry Potter was once again ready for action. And once he had that gorgeous man underneath him, he couldn’t get enough of him. Harry smiled under the blanket at the memory; he was proud of himself the way he took care of his beautiful mate.

Ron was a dream-come-true indeed. Harry wanted to take his time with him, but he remembered the pleading look in his eyes and thought about a shortcut… or maybe not. Which meant he could start enjoying himself by taking his robes off really slow.... he wasn’t wearing shirt underneath, which for some reason he found odd – but forgot about it promptly once he saw that creamy skin with a sun-print of freckles stretched in front of him like a fresh unspoilt snowy landscape, his for the taking… all of it… just for him.

And he sunk right down onto him. He licked every inch of that mesmerising body that was to blame for so many sleepless nights, coming back to all the sensitive spots that had him moaning and hissing “ _yess, Harry… oh, sweet Merlin, fuck…_ ” and aroused from just taking what was finally his, he asked him in a low husky voice:

“Play with yourself, Ron… show me how you like it… I want to watch… you have no idea how many times I wanted to watch….”

And the devoted ginger obeyed, no reservations, just a hard dark spark in his eyes, telling Harry he was up for anything, just fucking anything. So he let one of his large hands take a lazy stroll up and down his body, touches as light as a feather, seeking out all his favourite spots for indulging his lust, while the other hand sought out his hardness and the hard fist began rubbing, slowly yet mercilessly, until Harry could almost feel his torture and then surrendering to a rhythm that was on a sure path to bring them both to completion. Then he began to talk…

“I would do that a lot, you know…” he spoke softly, with hot huffs of air escaping his lips, indicating his arousal. “No matter my wife, no matter where… just as long as I’m around you… you can’t imagine how much you turn me on… sometimes I just look in your brilliant eyes and you give me _that_ smile, that’s just for me, and I’m as hard as a rock… And then you touch me _all the time_ in your innocent camaraderie and I just want to push you against the wall and fuck you right through it… right there and then… But I can’t, Harry… and it’s driving me crazy…”

Harry’s brilliant green eyes were as round as saucers as he was listening to that private confession, his arousal rising with every word until his cock was dripping just at the sound of his voice.

“Even at family dinners… at the Burrow… you would sit on the other side at the table and just smile straight at me… or, god forbid, next to me… rubbing your thigh against mine every once in a while… and it was such a sweet torment, oh, Harry… “ he finally gasped cause Harry Potter couldn’t take any more watching and took him in his mouth. “You can’t imagine how hard I am… under the table… looking for the tiniest chance to slip my hand underneath and work myself desperately… always looking at you… until you have me ready to come… Harry!” he cried his name, because Harry began sucking in abandon, hollowed cheeks and all, his hand desperately rubbing the bottom part of his huge shaft and rolling his balls, fingers crawling towards the exposed cleft of his arse… anything, anything to make him come, just as the redhead was making him come with his words alone.

And Harry remembered what pushed him over the edge the first time they were together, so he let his hands take turn with his mouth and began to talk to him in parseltongue. He told him he loved him, he wanted to be with him for the rest of their lives, that he will once just take him away and never bring him back so he could have him all to himself… he told him all that and more, everything he ever wanted to tell him, because like this he could without fearing that it might scare him away. And it wind the gorgeous ginger up just like he hoped it would, reduced his words into a stream of incoherent yelps and expletives, sown with his name and he felt his release gathering like an unstoppable wave at the bottom of his shaft. Harry changed the angle of his head just to watch his beautiful face contort in a orgasm, his ocean blue eyes open and staring at infinity, coming as hard as he was ever going to come and finally surrendered to his release with his name on his lips: “ _Harryloveyou_ … fuck… take me… deeper, love, deeper, all the way in... _myfuckinggodmylove_... yours, Harry… yours…-”

And Harry knew that for once he won’t be able to stop himself. He was achingly hard and knew there was nothing else for him to finally reach his completion. He had to go for the main prize, he had to have him. And yet he didn’t want to scare him away and he was sure that once he spoke his true wishes, he surely would. So he licked every last drop of the precious pearly liquid and slowly kissed his way up the endless landscape of the muscled body. Finally reaching his face he kissed him all over, gently and demandingly at the same time, whispering in his ear how unforgivably hot he was when he came and how hopelessly tense he was making him, spicing his words with small needy kisses until the generous mouth spread into a dreamy naughty smile and Ron mumbled:

“Bloody hell, Harry, you’re ruining me for everyone else... no need to butter me up like that, man... just say you want to fuck me numb and hear me say _yes_... you know I can’t refuse you anything... I never could...”

 _Ohgodohgodohgod_ , that was it, then... except it wasn’t _exactly_ what Harry wanted. Ever since he laid eyes on him, he yearned to have him inside, he was the one that wanted to get filled up and get fucked until he forgot his own name. So he told him that and watched the look in his eyes turned from awed to worried...

“We don’t have to, if you don’t want to!” he said quickly, desperate to hide his disappointment; after all there were so many other things they could do...

“Well, it’s not that I don’t want to...” said Ron, carefully choosing his words, “It’s just that... I always thought you’d want to be the one to... you know what...” he blushed and Harry found it so adorable that he couldn’t help but smile.

“It’s alright, love,” he told him, “Perhaps another time...”

“God damn you, Potter, will you at least let me finish!” the redhead’s temper flashed in his blue eyes and Harry felt a shiver down his body. “I didn’t say we’re not doing it, it’s just... well, because I didn’t think we would... I never really looked into the _mechanic_ of it.... you know... how to make it nice.... and not hurt you... cause I don’t want to hurt you, Harry!” he looked at him pleadingly and the raven-haired Gryffindor felt warmth flush across his heart.

“You’re not going to hurt me,” he promised. “And I’ve done my part... my research, if you like... I’m going to lead you all the way and I’m going to tell you if you’re hurting me and it’s going to be perfect... Please, let’s just do it, I’m desperate for it, I’ve been dreaming about it since I was fourteen...” he pleaded, only now aware how badly he really wanted it.

“Oh... so... if it’s down to fulfilling this naughty boy’s wishes... I can’t see what could possibly be wrong with that...” said Ron, suddenly with a mixture of innocent and predatory look in his eyes that made Harry’s insides quiver. “So teach me... Professor Potter...” he deliberately hissed his dooming words in his ear and Harry was willing himself not to come right here and there. Sliding down his body, the eager ginger went to work with so much dedication that Harry couldn’t honestly believe he actually had any reservations in the first place. _“Am I doing this right... Sir?”_ he would ask sweetly, leaving Harry to pant desperately and struggle to walk the thin line between jumping him and allowing his sweet torment to continue. And in the end it was perfect, he was perfect.

He seemed to be born for this role, this curious mix of tenderness and careful attendance to every one of Harry’s whims and oh, of that merciless domination and giving more, better, harder when Harry needed it. As big as he was they had to go really slow and only then Harry realized that his mate was right about hurting him, if he would let himself go. But once he was inside... oh, boy, once he was filling him up, staring down at him from high above with his little-boy awed look in his blue eyes, Harry has never felt more whole and more desperate to bring this journey of friendship and love into perfect completion.

And then Ron began to rock his hips, gently and slowly at first, careful to brush that special place inside him Harry told him about and, _fuckall_ wasn't it making Harry see stars and gasp for air on every move, hopelessly trying to impale himself deeper and faster, until Ron was pounding into him desperately, oblivious to his begging, unnecessary as it was, for he was begging for exactly what he was getting - harder, faster, _more_ of it, just more of this crazy monstrous fucking he craved for years, his big hand sliding up and down his shaft roughly at the same time... just what he wanted... just what he needed... until his body contracted on a thousand different levels, making him roar and come at the same time from somewhere deep inside him, for what seemed like forever and ever... He watched his beautiful mate follow him down the pit of passion, climax and completion and he knew he will never see anything more overwhelming if he lived to be a thousand years old. To him, Ron was perfection, a symphony of passion written just for him, a masterpiece of love and essence of life painted for his eyes only.

And that was just the first time that night. As it proved out, Ron was insatiable. Once he came down from his place of bliss, he smiled at Harry, one of those heart-stopping mind-blowing grins that never failed to take Harry’s breath away.

“Man, that was... just over the fucking top... I don’t even know where I was right about now... Harry, you’re incredible! I wish... I can’t wait... Oh, I didn’t hurt you too badly, did I?”

Worry crept into his voice and Harry’s face smiled of his own accord. Of course he was fucking aching all over the place - this redhead was a right monster! - but the long-awaited climax has left him so boneless and careless that he couldn’t bother to begin counting his wounds and bruises and stings and whatever other trails of this night are going to be visible on his body in the morning.

“Hurt me... you could never really hurt me, love... unless you plan to leave me now, that you’ve conquered me,” he answered with a smile and earned himself a small bite on the neck. And so much greater was his shock when Ron suddenly rolled away from the soft bear-fur and adamantly got up. His heart literally stopped for a second and it wasn’t until he spotted the familiar mischievous grin that it finally picked up beating.

“What?” said the ginger innocently. “You’re not going to starve me, are you? Seriously, Potter, you are the worst host I’ve ever had the bad luck to encounter! If my mother was here, we’d be 3 meals down by now, especially with the effort you’re costing me! I can’t run on air and a sandwich at noon, you know!” he complained, backed up by a magnificent growl in his flat stomach.

The shock-and-relief treatment he got, had Harry giggling helplessly like a 12-year-old once again as he desperately tried to follow his mate into the kitchen.

“Weasley... you and your appetite are going to be the end of me!” he finally managed, wiping the tears of laughter at the sight of mock indignation on a smiling face of his best mate. “Don’t you ever dare scaring me like this again!” he threatened, only half joking. “I’ll starve you all right! I’ll find you and I’ll lock you up and I won’t feed you for days!”

And just like that Ron was by his side, bending him backwards across the table and said softly, with a small dangerous smile: “That’s just as good... Professor Potter, Sir... I happen to know you’ve got something I could feed off for days...”

And once again, Harry was helpless, food all but forgotten as he was receiving his punishment and his absolution right there, on the stone table of the kitchen at number 12 Grimmauld place. And Ron did get his food after all... served properly over Harry’s body.

Insatiable indeed... Harry sighed happily at the memory. Merlin, he seemed to have gathered a life-worth of memories in a single night, so fulfilling and full of happiness were those stolen moment. He couldn’t get up just yet, just a few more minutes. He rolled over to face him, to at least watch him sleep, knowing full well that this was all he was going to see of his handsome face as soon as they got up. He didn’t have classes with him today, another one wasn’t due until two long days from now and though he was hoping for a lunch with him, he won’t really be able to have him to himself, will he? And to top all that, he promised Ginny an early night in and right now, his pregnant wife was as far from his mind as possible. He knew that made him a selfish bastard, but he couldn’t help it: his passion and his love finally being granted were still so fresh that every moment not spent with his lover felt wasted recklessly.

The redhead must have somehow felt his eyes or his warm breath on him, as he stirred restlessly and opened his vivid blue eyes just a fraction:

“Harry?” he asked sleepily. “What are you doing up already? It’s not time to go yet, is it?”

“No, nope, not yet...” Harry lied without feeling bad about it. “And you know I’m always up for you...” he whispered softly and felt warm arms embrace him as sleepy generous mouth looked for his.

So they’re going to be late, so what? What else is new? And if he plays his cards right, he might just get one more time out of him before they part... So what if he was sore from head to toe? He was sore before and for far worse reasons than this lovely ginger one by his side...

So Harry smiled and went to work his magic.

~ 

And in a beautiful marble manor another slender youth woke up with a small smile playing at his lips.


	24. ... love unrequited...

After running the events of last night in his mind time and time again, Draco Malfoy finally came up with a plan. Hence the smile.

He continued to lie in the Forbidden forest for some time to come after Weasley and Potter had left, covered in nothing but wonderfully “Ron” scented shirt and listening to the night sounds of the forest. His thoughts were occupied with one thing and one thing only: what the hell was going on between him and Weasley…? After all these years of wanting him desperately, the curious redhead finally gave in at the strangest of moments and apparently found him so intoxicating he couldn’t let go without leaving his mark. If he shut his eyes he could still see the long silken strands of flaming hair tickling his face, those incredible blue eyes staring at him in wonder and undeniable lust, soft mouth making out the shape of his name, not Malfoy, but Draco... whispering words of seduction and admiration, that made his insides liquefy.

Just thinking about those moments had him hard all over and he had to open his eyes and tried to shake the vision as there was precious little he could do about it now: Weasley was with Potter, once again he chose him without looking back and Draco was yet again left abandoned, with a chill settling right down his bones. What good was the money, the pedigree, the etiquette and all that prestige his parents so carefully invested in him if he kept on being dismissed over someone who had nearly none of those things?!

But they had _something_ … even Weasley himself won’t be able to deny it after last night. In spite of the fiery redhead following Potter as he always did, he turned to him, took care of him in spite of the terrible circumstances, even threw in a compliment… _almost like he cared_. And it was that thought that kept Draco warm under that too large shirt that he found so precious. The pull between them was primary, like old magic of the pure blood – they understood each other without talking, without even liking each other. Something in Ron responded to Draco’s vulnerability and the other way around, Draco found Ron’s raw sincerity and inert dominance, even savagery, inexplicably attractive. Unforgivably so, really. So much so, in fact, he found he could barely fight the urge to throw himself at him.

And Malfoys didn’t do unfulfilled desires, their urges didn’t go ungranted. So what he really needed to do was to think. And he could do that unbounded, lying under Ron’s shirt, listening to the night sounds of the forest, not at all frightening as he remembered them to be, but strangely comforting and reassuring as if this was home, as if he was the creature of the night himself, not one Draco Malfoy, but just a boy who came looking for some warmth and affection and was awed to have found it with the person most unlikely.

No pressure to behave properly, no annoyance at someone pestering him about what was on his mind, no need to look for evasive answers, not even the fear and confusion brought upon by too much digging inside himself and finding unexpected feelings he didn’t know what to do with. He simply was, he felt what he felt, it will not do him any good to dwell on it, he didn’t look for ways to excuse his feelings, he just needed to find a solution, something that will not leave him side-tracked again, feeling void, unwanted on the inner most level, shivering cold as he was most of the time. _Detached_.

Weasley annihilated that feeling on the whim, his warmth and radiance touched him where he didn’t think there was anything left alive, broke his defences, eradicated his arrogance, rose to be his equal. And Draco Malfoy didn’t come across his equal every day. Sure, there were people who thought themselves better, like his father or bloody Potter and when one comes to think of it, the world might favour them in comparison as well, but the other lot was just inferior and Draco didn’t strive to spend his life looking up to someone (again!) or smirking over another for not living up to his standards.

There was no point comparing Ron to anything Draco was raised to believe was a measure of importance, he wouldn’t match up, but he also wouldn’t care, he just made them look foolish in comparison to what he inspired. With Ron, there were no standards; Draco eliminated them himself by wanting to be with him. In spite of everything. And he did, there was no point in denying that. And if Draco Malfoy wanted a piece of one undeserving Ronald Weasley, it was all really down to the matter of logistics. It was already decided.

So how to get there? He purposefully tried to block the images of what he could be doing right now in Potter’s arms, because jealousy clouded his mind and made him do foolish petty things that weren’t going to take care of his problem. Though it would be enjoyable to allow his mind to play a movie of “ _1001 ways to hex Harry Potter to oblivion for taking my man”_ , it was useless in his current situation. Draco was his mother’s son, practical, resourceful and extremely determinate. He needed to keep his focus on _him_ , the unforgettable redhead that kept fucking with his mind beyond belief and if he can keep his goal set before him, he’ll get there eventually. He’s worked hard for his goals before.

So he closed his eyes and pictured that young unassuming freckled face as he remembered him from his school days, when he first felt the shocking pull towards him, and he watched that innocent face morph into a young man with stormy blue eyes, so close, too close to him, whispering his name “Draco...”

He shivered in want and lust under the confines of _his_ shirt and as he wrapped it closer around him, it suddenly hit him, what could be his first step, his foot-in-the-door to initiate and pursue further contact if not some sort of relationship. It was right here, wrapped around him all this time and Draco inhaled the concept of his game along with its scent. He didn’t have much to start with, given the past animosity between him and his object of affection, but it’s going to have to do. He smiled happily and decided he was ready to go home. He was freezing his balls off in this blasted forest anyway.

He carefully put the precious shirt on and tucked it under his robes, thanking Merlin and all the four founders of Hogwarts that at least those made it through this day relatively unharmed. Then he dutifully apparated to the parlour of the Malfoy manor to greet his mother – god knows where father was these days! – he knew she at least must have been worried since he was home so late from his first day at the Academy. He served her some off-hand lie about checking out the Hogwarts library – and, honestly, how _awfully_ stocked it was, he will be forced to spend a fortune to get all the required reading under the roof! – and put her at peace by chatting about the terrible decision of hiring Potter as their teacher – at least that he could be honest about. He never mentioned Weasley, not with a word. His mother was as astute as they came, he couldn’t risk her seeing a glimpse of his feelings.

Because he was still weak after all. With his shirt underneath his robes he was surrounded by his scent and it felt so good and so undoing at the same time that he couldn’t trust himself not to falter and ruin it all. So he apologized on the fist occasion, blaming a small headache and hunger – pinch of honesty again – with a reminder that he must be back to school at early hour the next day. He kissed mother goodnight and was finally allowed to close the doors to his bedroom and seek the comfort and shelter of his luxurious four-poster bed. Which he would gladly exchange for a small uncomfortable clearing under a tree, with twigs under his back and a ginger body looming above him. Because those were exactly the dreams he woke up from, painfully hard, as was always the case when he dreamed of him. Which was all the time lately anyway.

He must have been more exhausted than he realized as he found it difficult to get up, but if he wanted to do this right, he had to be early. He lost enough time as it was. When he staggered towards the bathroom, he quickly realized in the shower that soaping himself was't exactly going to make his hard-on go away, so he closed his eyes, recalled that creamy skin, the innocent freckles, the feral blue eyes, added a pinch of imagination, making the beautiful redhead standing under a shower with streams of soapy water running down his body – and almost no tossing off was necessary to come with a yelp and his name on the lips. Well, that alleviated one problem. Baby steps, he told himself with self inflicted sarcasm.

After a quick breakfast with mother – it would have been suspicious if he missed it, he rarely did – his next step was Diagon Alley. Madame Malkin’s shop, to be precise. He was a regular there and he usually spent a fortune in her store, so as soon as he entered, he got the owner herself to attend him and her undivided attention at that. Which was perfect, because today Draco Malfoy had a special request. Maximum discretion was required as neither his mother or his father were ever to hear of this and his order was not going to the open account they had with the shop – he was going to pay cash, a heap of golden galleons for what he wanted and how fast he wanted it.

And when he left, Madame Malking was careful to keep her thoughts to herself as to why would one Draco Malfoy require a piece of garment – and an exclusive one at that! - for one Ronald Weasley for she was certain that none other could be in question. Professional as she was, she knew measurements of all her most esteemed clients by heart and though Ron visited rarely in his youth on account of the majority of his clothes being second-hand, he had become quite a regular in the recent years, when he finally grew to his full height. Problems finding standard-size clothing, that one, a mountain of a man that he was… and what a mountain at that!

Madame Malking saw exposed bodies as part of her business and she was rarely swayed from her professional attitude, but she _always_ made an exception for Ron Weasley: what a piece of art! And shy and uncomfortable, which only added to his charm and she made sure she was always the one to attend to him, just to feel his heart beat under that wonderfully hot skin, when she took his measure – one can never be too sure if the memory still serves! Moments like that really made her work worth a while. Ah, if only she was 30 years younger…

So she was certain that Malfoy junior, who used to be an insufferable little brat but miraculously turned into a well-groomed (well, he _was_ always handsome!), well-mannered youth, purchased something that only the youngest Weasley son could wear without looking ridiculous. Curious matter indeed… especially in a light of those two always being at each other’s throats even as children. But perhaps that has changed as well, as everything kept on shifting and turning in these turbulent times when one knew not where to put one’s foot to stand solid. But her sense of “solid” was rooted in her discretion and professional attitude, so as curious as she was, she wasn’t going to make any inquiries deeper into the matter. Best forget about it promptly!

But Draco never suspected what kind of a train of thought he put into action with his order – he had no idea of Ron’s actual measurements, so he took his precious possession with him, showed it to the owner and asked for one the same, except in far more luxurious material and more vibrant colour. And with a touch of magic. Ron Weasley was getting a present that cost more than his father made in half a year. And it had to be done and delivered today.

Instinctively Draco knew, there was no time to lose. If he wanted to play this, he had to do it now, when the memory of their encounter was still fresh, when the strings pulling them together still held their strength. He left Madame Malkin’s shop with her promise to have the precious article delivered straight to Hogwarts by the end of the day and that will just have to do.

So he was mortified when he stepped into the classroom, undergoing the now-standard procedure of whispers and sighs, only to find out that Weasley was not there. A shock of anger, disappointment and searing jealousy rushed through him like a tide. What a fool he was to assume he was actually going to show up! Naturally Weasley is going to make the best of his wife gone for the week – yes, it was in all the blasted magical media across the country that Senior Ministry Official Mrs. Hermione Granger-Weasley is going to present them at this or the other international meeting  on the continent – he would have, too, in his place!

But he still hated himself for his idiocy, naïveté and almost childish expectation. And he hated him as well, just for being him, his perfect self whose sole purpose in life seemed to be making Draco miserable. He had no back up plan for this. If he wasn’t coming in today, that was it. Absent-mindedly he walked to his chair and sat down, with eyes focused on his perfectly manicured hands, not listening, not hearing anything. Until...

“Why so sad, ferret?” Spoken softly, without any genuine malice, just as a nostalgic reminder of simple hatred that used to exist between them. Startled, Draco lifted his eyes to meet a smiling freckled face of one Ron Weasley, who was positively radiating happiness today. Draco would rather not think, what was the reason behind that. If he wanted to survive, sometimes he had to take things at their face value, not over-think the reasons, the motives, the history. He was a survivor and he could do this. With him present, he could do anything.

“Why so happy, weasel?” Draco returned with one of his usual stings and arched his eyebrow, just to see Ron’s mouth stretched into one of those brilliant smiles that made him glad he was already sitting down.

“Oh, I have my reasons...” said Ron enigmatically and only now did Draco notice how positively shagged out Weasley looked. Which, of course, made him look a million times more sexy and attractive to the point that Draco even forgot to be jealous, just hopelessly tense and more than a little nervous.

“More like _a_ reason...” he mumbled pointedly looking at a poorly concealed love bite peeking out from the edge of his robes.

“Maybe,” agreed Ron grudgingly, joy never leaving his ocean blue eyes, his fingers subconsciously touching the mark as if it was a medal he was trying not to flash around with too much pride.

“You might want to be careful,” suggested Draco coolly, trying to sound as disinterested as one Malfoy could be about personal markings one Weasel wore on his body. “Since it is common knowledge and well documented that your wife is out of the country, one might find it... _intriguing_ that you’re flashing what looks to be a very fresh – what are those called by the commoners? – love bite, I believe...”

He was surprised when Ron chuckled softly at his pointedly mean remark and shook his head: “Once a Malfoy, always a Malfoy... you just can’t step out of your skin, can you, marble-face?”

It mortified Draco to be called like this – of course he was very pale and of course he strived towards looking disinterested, that’s what upper classes generally did, but _marble-face_... seriously?! He was anything but carved from stone and if only he could pull that big palm onto his chest, he could make him feel what a crazy alive 100-miles-a-minute beating heart lived under that impenetrable surface! As it was, he couldn’t do that, so he just proceeded to stare coldly at the stupid Weasel and his freckled love-spotted skin.

“Last time I checked, Weasel, marble was worth something, while used – one might even say _abused_ \- goods such as your skin, wouldn’t be worth a sickle, not even to your wife!” he spat angrily.

Finally a flare of wrath in those blue eyes. And it caught Draco’s breath in his throat, exciting him beyond belief and at the same time making him miserable at the sudden realization that this might not exactly be the best way to get into redhead’s good grace. Damn his Black temper! Couldn’t Malfoys be inbreeds like all good high-standing families!?

But that was just too good to pass. Capturing Weasel’s attention, full _undivided_ attention, even if in the worst possible manner, just like back in the days when the redhead was a self-conscious over-grown youth in faded clothes, vulnerable to every insult, easy prey to every jab – that’s what fuelled Draco right now as well as it did back then. Providing more material for tossing off, of course. That’s how precious Weasley was, when he was angry. His blue eyes got clouded, you could see the cords in that muscular long neck getting tense and all that brutal temper and power was just at arm’s reach, bubbling under the surface of that wonderfully hot freckled skin...

 Draco’s hard-on was now painful. Staring into stormy Weasel’s eyes did nothing for making him relax, if anything, the urge to initiate contact, any contact with him, became almost unbearable. So the world almost span around him when Weasley leaned closer, almost over-whelming him with his heat, and hissed through gritted teeth:

“Oh, I’m sorry my skin is such an insult to you, Malfoy. I’ll make sure never again to impose upon you the horrors of its sight, as it is indeed covered in what we, the commoners, call love-bites. That would be bites, made out of love, something I’m sure you know nothing about!”

Draco closed his eyes, to stop himself from hearing those unnecessarily cruel words and to instead focus on his undoing scent and body heat that drugged him to the point that he couldn’t really think of any reservations why he shouldn’t touch him... Luckily for him and his dignity, Ron already moved a step away and Draco masked his raised hand by lifting it further to his neck, massaging gently. He knew he wasn’t fooling Weasley, how could the man _not know_ what he was doing to him!? Draco practically humped his leg right there and it was just sheer dumb luck that he managed to piss the redhead off enough to have him move out of his personal space as Draco was sure he could no longer be held accountable for his actions.

But there he was, back again, tilting his head forward, angry eyes staring directly at his, piercing his defences as if there were never in place: “Of course, I _would_ find it much easier to spare Your Majesty from that offensive sight, if I could actually have _my shirt back_!” he hissed with malice. “But I’m sure that by now some snake already made his lair in it, so Your Highness is just going to have to excuse me for this terrible transgression this once!”

He spin on his heel, took a few long strides and slumped his body down into what was clearly marked as his table, still fuming and sending murderous looks his way.

Draco was stuck somewhere between an incredulous laugh and self-pitying wrath at his own stupidity.

“ _Well played, Malfoy, well played indeed!_ ” he thought to himself bitterly trying his darndest not to look as mortified as he felt. _“By this rate I’m sure he’s going to ask your hand in marriage by the end of the day! You blasted self-conceited fool!”_ And he wanted his shirt back, that’s what was killing Draco the most. Not his shirt, his only prized possession, Draco really couldn’t give that up! And he won’t, he decided promptly. He didn’t care if Weasley told the entire school that Malfoy, the evil Death Eater stole his shirt for whatever black magic he required it for, Draco was not giving up his shirt so easily! In fact, not at all. And he gripped the strap of his bag, where the said shirt was currently residing happily, just to make sure it was still there. If only Madame Malkin’s package arrived soon, honestly that woman grew sloppier and slower with every year gone by, wasn’t he clear enough in stressing that this was _an emergency_!?

As it was, Draco Malfoy could never really stay angry at himself for too long and before lunch he already had half a dozen of more or less insane plans ready how to corner Weasley and just... do something, he didn’t know what, he’ll think of that once he gets there. He just knew he desperately needed to get to him, near him, into that comfort zone of radiating heat and piercing eyes and generous mouth, just begging to be played with... Here he was, doing it again, making himself so bothered it will be minutes before he can get up safely and not have anyone notice that Draco Malfoy, the proverbial iceberg, is... _not_ quite his usual composed self. Which was an understatement of the century given his current state of arousal. Blasted Weasley, it was all his fault! How can one expect to keep full mental capacity in the range of those stormy blue eyes! Why the hell does he have to be so power-charged? It was driving Draco out of his mind.

And then finally – the recess at noon! Weasley gruntingly gave into the pleas of his fan-club and left for the Great hall to enjoy his meal and Draco could miserably pick up the remains of his dignity and his blown-apart brain and take it to the bathroom to enjoy an emergency wank. God, this man was killing him! He hadn’t felt so scattered and mindless in years, he couldn’t remember his passion ever boiling through the confines of his composure so unabashed. Fuck the stupid blasted Weasel! _Oh, if only..._

His resentful mood was finally improved when he heard a hush of soft wings and a big shadow circled around his head. Massive business-looking owl, clearly bought for transporting big packages, landed on his out-stretched hand, dropping a carefully-wrapped parcel carelessly in front of his feet.

“Careful with that!” he warned her begrudgingly, but couldn’t muster any genuine anger as his heart leaped in expectation of what was in the package. “It costs more than ten of you, cage and all!” The owl huffed as in indignation, but he was suddenly in such a brilliant mood he had to share it with her: he looked in his pockets to find her some treats and though they were clearly far above her usual fodder, they were hers to have. The ungrateful thing pecked him on the hand, producing an “ _ouch_!” and “ _shhh_!” and there he was, alone again, nursing his bruised hand. He will _have_ to have a talk with Madame Malkin about the blasted bird on their next encounter, injuring clients was unacceptable!

And now the hard part: to corner Weasley alone somehow. Which was a task he wasn’t sure he was up to after their latest less than amiable encounter. Add a vast number of Weasley’s eager suitors to the problem and he almost lost his heart to try and do this today. When he spotted the familiar fiery hair surrounded by a crowd of chirping students, his heart soared for a moment – maybe it was not all lost just yet! – but then another person came into view, raven-hair and all, and Draco felt as if he was suddenly pulled at the bottom of a tar pit.

He almost forgot about him, _fucking_ Potter... 


	25. ... but not quite

Of course Potter was here, of course he bloody well _was_! If they didn’t have classes with them it didn’t mean he wasn’t present! And of course he went looking for his lover first chance he got! And Draco thought that the whole bloody bunch of students must be legally blind to misinterpret the body language between those two!

They weren’t touching, of course not, it wouldn’t do to add wind to potential insinuations of favouritism. But Potter was standing so deeply in the personal space of _his_ smiling ginger that Draco’s heart constricted like it was squeezed by a fist and as he watched Potter literally devour Weasley with his eyes cold hatred poured down his veins. God dammit, why was it always so easy for Potter to take what Draco wanted from the bottom of his heart? He always had it all, the House cups, the Quidditch cups, nearly all the teachers on his side, even the prophecy seemed to have worked in his favour – and now this! Will he really lose it all because he cannot find a single thing in his life that would matter that Potter didn’t get to first?! His bliss gone, his present forgotten, he stared at them from afar, lost in the crowd, with a heart in his throat, all but forgotten once again.

Weasley made Potter laugh at something and as the recess was almost over, the green-eyed youth slapped him on the back casually, as if saying goodbye and the sun caught on his wedding band... and Draco, suddenly remembering what the ring said, just overwhelmingly felt like crying. Why the fuck did he even bother? Potter had already won and he had no business here. Positive that he can’t stand to sit here for the remainder of classes he turned around and went to clear his desk. All was numb inside of him, he felt defeated like never before.

Package still in his hands, bag slammed over his shoulder, he made it to the door precisely at the moment when it was blocked by a tall figure and he found himself face to face with a stunning redhead that caused his demise. The smile on Ron’s face was momentarily replaced by incredulity when he saw that the blond was set to leave.

“Just where do you think you’re going, Malfoy?” he asked rudely, not paying any attention to a crowd of his suitors still closely at his heels. “Get back in, the class is about to start!”

And Draco finally lost it. All the anger, frustration and crushed expectations rammed out of him at this direct insolence.

“Just who do you think you are, Weasel?! Just because Potter won you a war and you were just standing there joint at his hip, doesn’t necessarily mean that you get to be all high and mighty, telling me what am I supposed or _not supposed_ to do! I damn well come and go as I _please_ , the day has not yet come when a Malfoy will be ordered around by a mere filthy Muggle-lover of a _Weasel_!” He didn’t realize he was screaming until his voice died out and the echo of it still resonated around the half-empty classroom.

His classmates were gawping at him, open mouths and all, and a few actually stepped back in expectation of spectacular fight that was certain to ensue. But Ron merely stared down his eyes, reading his pain, his anger, his loss, his emptiness, just like he did so many years ago on that abandoned corridor... and then his large hands suddenly slipped around Draco’s waist, lifting him like he weighed nothing and throwing him unceremoniously across his shoulder. Draco was too dumbfounded to even consider going for his wand, but once he was hanging upside down from redhead’s shoulder, it was already too late.

“Move!” the giant ginger said in a booming deep voice and motioned against a flabbergasted crowd: “Out of the way, I said! Sorry, ladies and gentlemen, I believe some maintenance might be in order here.”

And he simply carried Draco away from the scene, the blond too frozen in disbelief to be able to put up a fight. They didn’t go far, just to the first available bathroom, where Ron slammed him roughly against the wall, and threw a casual  _Colloportus_! at the door across his shoulder. Then he turned towards him, his blue eyes meeting the defiant grey of Draco’s eyes and he simply said: “Talk!”

Draco was livid, on the verge of tears, humiliated by his own expectations and now this… _monster_ of a human _turned presumptuous enough_ to order him to talk. Talk!? _Scream_ , more likely! At least he felt like screaming and tearing this beautiful face apart so he could finally be free of him, but he was a Malfoy and Malfoys didn’t do screaming. So instead, he gathered the last remains of his self-composure, tugged furiously at his wrinkled clothes to even them out and made an effort to rush past him:

“Move, you big troll, I’ve got nothing to say to you! As to your brutish behaviour, I’ll be sure to notify the Headmistress and…”

He never got to finish the sentence. Large muscled arm showed up from out of nowhere and stopped his progress by simply pulling him into a warm embrace and before Draco Malfoy knew it, he was nested safely in the arms of one Ronald Weasley, his arch-enemy, his unrequited love, crying his fucking eyes out. He was sobbing for god-only-knows how long, several times horrified at the thought what a bloody fool he was making of himself and how is he ever going to look Weasley in the eye after this fiasco – but he just didn’t know how to stop and he couldn’t find a reason why he should. It just felt bloody _brilliant_ in that warm embrace, feeling shielded, safe and protected from the world like he hadn’t felt in years.

In fact, he only had one other memory like that: he was about six and went horse-riding with father once and when they were out there in the field, a storm caught up with them. And for some reason Lucius didn’t bother to conjure any kind of shelter above them, so they could make it home dry, he simply pulled Draco off his pony and onto his tall white stallion and closed his coat around his son. Surrounded by the comforting heat of his father’s body and the darkness made by a warm soft fabric of Lucius’s coat, Draco felt as if he was wrapped in a cocoon of happiness, safety and love. Such demonstrations of his mighty father’s affection for him were so rare and precious that he was sure he remembered every single one of them, but this one was dearest to his heart. He remembered wishing that they were much farther away from home, so this way home would not end so quickly, but as it was, it was mere minutes and he was safely embraced by his worried mother, fussing about his fragile health. Lucius threw in some off-hand explanation about wanting to protect the boy from moisture and cold and they never spoke of it again, but the feeling of protectiveness and warmth he felt in his father’s strong embraced stayed forever etched in the memory of young Draco.

And it was just how he felt right now. Strong muscular arms were wrapped around him like walls of a shelter and his robes had that unmistakable Ron smell he wanted to bury himself in so badly... and he was holding him close to his chest, not caring if his tears soaked him to the skin and he didn’t say much, no attempts at inevitably awkward conversation, just strangely comforting sounds such as “ _shhh… it’s going to be alright… I promise…_ ”. And somehow, Draco believed him.

But maybe he felt as if he was undeserving of such moments as this, because even in his misery he couldn’t stop a laugh escaping his mouth, strangely at odds with the tears streaming down his face:

“I don’t know why I’m being such an insufferable idiot, really… why should I be crying… look at you… you’re life is truly fucked up… married to a woman you don’t love, happily cheating on her… a boyfriend you’re in love with and can’t be with... and here you are - stuck with _me_ of all people, your childhood nemesis, playing a therapist…”

He don’t know why he did it and the second it came out of his mouth, he braced himself for that impossibly wonderful embrace to end, but instead he felt Ron’s chest shake in a soft chuckle and he mumbled quietly:

“Once a Malfoy, always a Malfoy… even when you’re shattered… just there I thought you’d insult my mother, too… you’re so adorably reliable, blondie…”

And somehow that made Draco cry even harder. Hiding his face in that broad chest he felt his big hands getting tangled in his hair, slowly moving it to the side, warm breath caressed his face so he knew those soft lips must be really close and he heard him whisper:

“It’s so you, Malfoy… even when you cry, you’re still your haughty self… I used to hate that about you… and I think now I’ve come to appreciate it… it makes you so much more real, when you come undone…”

God, he loved him…. He could no longer hide it from himself, he was so in love he didn’t know whether he was coming or going, his scent intoxicated him, his voice burnt like soot, he just wanted to own him so bad, he was shaking. And still his voice kept dripping in like warm honey, tearing through years of self-denial and silver armour of good breeding.

“What’s a therapist, Malfoy? Is it like confidante? Cause I’d like that. It feels right…”

Suddenly one of his fingers crawled under Draco’s chin and he lift his face up ever so slightly. All Draco could think was how horrible he must look with his tear streaked face and Merlin, did he _really_ have to mentally shatter in front of him of all the people, he must think him such an impossible wimp…

And then he felt his lips on his cheek, just a soft peck, carefully catching a tear streaming down and quickly moving to another cheek, to catch another drop of salty liquid that just wouldn’t stop coming. And back to the other side, one more tear caught… and another…

“What is this game, Weasley?” sniffed the blond amidst his tears, flabbergasted, yet strangely comforted and feeling exposed as never before. Honestly, this blasted man was just full of surprises, what was he playing at now? Not that he minded, not really, how could he, when those soft lips were the centre of every romantic-gone-erotic thought he ever had since he was a boy.

“Well… you probably don’t know that… but the Muggles say… that tears are the blood of the soul… and blood of wizard’s soul… I reckon that must really be precious… better not let too many go to waste,” the redhead smiled at his disbelieving eyes and then smirked: “But if you don’t like this idea, because you’re too bloody high and mighty… and can’t possibly find anything Muggles say of any use… then think of me as a Keeper… trying to keep those Quaffles away from my hoops…” he chuckled gently, never ceasing his attempts to catch every last bit of salty liquid making it past his nose.

“Weasley… you’re such an idiot…” finally managed Draco with a whisper, now positively drowning in the mesmerizing blue eyes at close proximity. “How did you come up with Quidditch talk amidst all this mess?… And Quaffles of all things, silly…” he had a smile escape him as he realized that his tears were finally becoming more scarce and far between. “And just what do you think you are you protecting, I’d like to know…”

“Oh, I thought you’d never ask…” said Ron in a low husky voice and suddenly his soft tongue slipped onto Draco’s mouth and slowly moved to outline the inside of it… lower lip first, one corner to the other… licking the seam ever so gently… and moving to the upper lip… travelling slow, silkily brushing the wetness inside of his mouth until Draco closed his eyes and felt his knees buckle. No one ever kissed him like this, he didn’t even know kisses like this existed. His body responded so violently to this tormenting gentleness that he felt his fists squeezing the redhead’s robes just to keep a grip and make sure he doesn’t go anywhere.

Ron was now kissing him full on, soft mouth and slick skilled tongue and sharp white teeth working him into moaning and shaking and taking and giving until he didn’t know anymore where was the end of him and the beginning of that wonderful body pressing against him… _hard_ , he realized…. Weasley was hard, as hard as they came and he, Draco has made him like this… it was an exhilarating thought and it fuelled his passion to a point that he couldn’t keep his hands to himself. He slipped one hand between his legs and rubbed gently, while the other hand landed on his incredible arse and squeezed hard… and the guttural sound that came out of Ron’s mouth was just the most undoing sound of need and frustration Draco has ever heard…

“Merlin… Malfoy… you just can’t keep your hands off me, can you?” And Draco said nothing, because he was left breathless and the only thing on his mind had nothing to do with any kind of smart retort, but spelled more like hopeless begging for “ _more_ ” and “ _dear God please let him fuck me_ ”.

And Ron must have felt it too, because he cursed helplessly and hissed almost angrily: “Sweet Godric help me, I can’t seem to keep away from you either…”

And they both knew it would not end here, because somehow their magical energies aligned and there was no stopping this tide.

“I wanna fuck you,” said Ron suddenly with blunt brutality, urgency in his voice unmistakable and God, Draco wanted nothing more than a piece of that. “But I don’t want to do it here… “ he added between a shower of hard sucking kisses, leaving marks all over his neck and collar bones and asked: “You have a place…?”

“Yes… oh, God… yes… just hold me… I’ll take us there…” And without a second thought Draco side-apparated them to an apartment he kept in Hogsmeade for his nightly escapades, while he was still in school. He didn’t bother with his belongings, he forgot about his present; everything had his initials on it anyway and no one would dare to put a finger on it.

He didn’t care where he apparated them, so they just happened to land in a lobby, toppling down onto the shiny black and white tiles. Draco ended up on top, but as he stared down into the predatory blue eyes, he just knew he wasn’t going to stay there. Ron was clear about his wishes and Draco was smart enough not to try and play him.

“Bed,” said Ron between two hungry kisses and the blond just couldn’t get up fast enough to show him the way.

The apartment had a tiny kitchen, a ridiculously luxurious bathroom and a large bedroom with a four poster bed. Draco hasn’t been in here in years, ever since the war, in fact; yet it was clear that someone was in charge of airing the place, taking care of the dust and providing wonderfully expensive fresh smelling linen. But frankly, Draco wouldn’t have noticed if they were in middle of the ruins of Hogwarts right after the battle. As soon as he opened the bedroom door, he felt himself land on the bed with magnificent force of the redhead right on top of him. Just where he wanted him to be.

Ron was unstoppable. Trashing his body against the silken black sheets, he put his smart fingers to work and had Draco undressed without hesitation, taking no care of what he tore and how much damage he left in his trail. So it was almost painful to have him suddenly stop if only just to look at his prey’s pale body reflect against the black sheets and he whispered feverishly:

“A nice place you’ve got yourself here, blondie... a proper snake-lair...”

And Draco pulled his wonderful fiery head down to his torso, desperate to feel his body heat, his sensuous touch, his overwhelming presence. “ _A nice place indeed, Weasley..._ ” he thought to himself, unable to speak cause his mouth was strangely occupied with a mixture of moaning, hissing his approval and just downright begging for more. “ _Hardly worthy of you, gorgeous..._ ”

Ron was working him with everything he got. Wonderful sucking mouth and nibbling teeth and, oh god, that magnificent tongue, exploring every inch of his marble skin, turning it pink in the ensuing waves of tormenting pleasure; large hands caressing, squeezing, pinching, probing... until Draco could no longer take it and he begged for it:

“Damn you, Weasley... get inside me... I have to feel you from within...”

And Ron wasn’t in a state to be asked twice. “You’ve got...?”

“There, first drawer.... for Merlin’s sake hurry up... don’t make me beg for it, you bastard...”

“That’s my snake, right there..." Ron smiled, his blue eyes so intense and feral they would scare the living daylights out of him anywhere else but here.

On impulse Draco reached for redhead’s robes and had the buttons flying in all direction in his eagerness, earning himself a chuckle and “ _that’s the spirit, lovely, just what I want_ ”. With his eyes firmly planted on his face, Ron coated his fingers in an expensive smelling lube and went to work... Probing and rubbing gently, he had Draco writhing and whispering pleas though he promised himself he won’t. There was just nothing he could do, he was completely at the mercy of that infernal man, who was used to taking things his way. When the first finger broke the confines of his arse, Draco hissed and closed his eyes at sudden intrusion - _God, it’s been too long since he let anyone do that_ – but Ron leaned over him and whispered:

“Oh, man... you have no idea how right it feels to be finally breaching that tight teasing arse of yours... you have to let me do more...” At that moment another finger was added, not waiting for his permission and Draco desperately tried to impale himself on them, cause he knew that any time now, those long fingers will brush against that special place inside of him and... " _ohhhh_... he couldn't stop the sudden loud yelp at impossible pleasure.... God, how incredibly good it felt, how could he ever stop doing that?!

“That’s right... that’s my beautiful silver snake... enjoy it, gorgeous… love it, you’re gonna get more... I’m gonna fuck you so hard, snake, you’re going to feel it in your mouth... you have no idea, how hard I am, how badly I want it... let me have it, beautiful....”

“ _OhmyfuckingMerlin_ , Ron, come... come to me...” Draco was cursing and writhing and when the redhead finally entered him, his whole body convulsed as if in a fit, trying to get him as deep inside as he could, knowing that there was no other way for him to ever feel complete again. Ron clearly knew what he was doing, because his slow and deliberate brushing against his prostate soon escalated into a series of short deep shoves that had Draco sprawled in front of him, desperately holding for a headboard to get more leverage and have himself fucked thoroughly.

“I’ll ruin your for everyone else, Draco Malfoy,” he told him in a low almost threatening voice between huffs of air, rhythmically following with his shoves, clearly indicating his arousal. “I’ll fuck the magic out of you, blondie... and then I’ll spread it right back in with my tongue... and you’re going to love it, you little blond slut...” Talking dirty was clearly Ron’s thing... and apparently Draco’s as well as he soon found out he could hardly hold back the waves of his release...

“Ron... please... _lovepleasemore_... faster... harder...!” was all his usually eloquent vocabulary turned up, as he was right on the verge of merging right into the blasphemously beautiful body of his tormentor. And his begging must have made the ginger from hell lose his composure.

“Fuck, Draco.... shit, you’re making me come,... I’ll break you in two, you little bitch, I’ll show you...” Suddenly his body movements shifted a gear up into some sort of speed-fucking mode, thrusting so deep inside him that Draco saw stars, and the blond desperately grabbed a hold of his neglected cock because he was ever so ready to come and this was going to be his finishing touch. And he met his large palm there, fingers intertwined and working frantically with a much needed roughness until Draco’s body finally tensed like a snake before strike and exploded into another dimension.

He didn’t hear himself roar his name and “ _lloveyouRonIloveyouIloveyou_ , oh, fuck… you… love… _youalone_ …” because his body was falling apart and there was nothing but just that massive wave of blissful pleasure to ride and incredible release that followed when he felt himself tumble down. His muscles contracted around Ron’s shaft almost painfully, evoking a right howl of unbearable pleasure and the stunning ginger’s body went into an over-drive and froze mid-motion as he was shaking and shooting load after load of come into that lithe unearthly beautiful body that just came undone before his eyes.

“ _Fuck, fuck, fuck_ , Draco... oh, godfuckingdamnyou, you’re beautiful...” he growled from somewhere deep inside of him, not able to stop a stream of expletives and compliments that accompanied his release.

He collapsed on top of the blond youth and hoped he didn’t work himself into some sort of cardiac arrest, because it sure felt as if his heart just exploded along with his groin. He had no idea that fucking the gorgeous Slytherin is going to affect him so. He tried to calm himself down and find a part of his missing brain to be able to figure out what just happened, but to no avail. He closed his eyes instead and closed his mind to any thoughts that will inevitably come and make his life so much more complicated. He didn’t even like him, for fuck’s sake, and yet his body was telling him he just had the most mind-shattering sex that bordered on out-of-body-experience… unlike anything he’s ever had, actually…. with anyone. Even with...

He growled quietly and shook his ginger hair, slowly slipping out of that incredible body that just offered him ecstasy beyond words, only to hear him whimper quietly and slim fingers quickly caught into the strands of his flaming hair.

“Just a minute longer...” Draco whispered. “Don’t let me freeze again...” And Ron knew he meant it in more ways than one, so he obligingly lay down on top of him once more and kissed the cord in his neck.

“You’re bloody incredible, you know that...” he heard the blond speak softly and for some reason it filled him with pride and unexpected tenderness.

“Don’t be a sap, Malfoy,” he whispered to kill whatever feelings were coming to life here. “You know better than to go fishing for compliments... you know what a mind-blowing fuck you are...” As soon as the words were out of his mouth he realized he just let something slip, that was not likely to make him get out of here soon, so he had another attempt at gathering the remains of his common sense and composure.

“I should really be going, you know...” he grunted in his ear, barely beating the urge to start nibbling on the soft earlobe, flushed pink.

“Stay... “ asked Draco, eyes still closed not aware if it counted as pleading or not, because all the rules and boundaries has just been irreparably blurred when it came to him... to this thing between them.

“I… I really can’t...” replied Ron, as if he suddenly remembered himself, his voice soft, but adamant though one could not mistake the remorse in it boiling right under the surface. “People will wonder... and when Harry finds out we had a fight, he’ll come looking for me... and then you don’t have a future, Malfoy...” Soft puff of disappointment escaped the Slytherin’s mouth and for some reason, Ron found it endearing. Still, thought of Harry and his angry green eyes sobered him to a point that he got up and asked casually:

“Does this place have a bathroom...?”

“Of course it does, don’t be...” Draco’s eyes suddenly shot open as he reprimanded himself not to down-talk Weasley if he ever wants to see him again outside the classroom.

“Daft...” Ron finished his sentence, with an unmistakable amusement in his voice. “Honestly, Malfoy... a man fucks the brains out of you and you can’t help but calling _him_ daft?! Once a Malfoy...” he shook his head as if in disbelief and closed the door behind him, still chuckling: “That’s my reliable blondie all over again!”

Draco whimpered disappointedly when he heard the lock click. He was serious about wanting to leave then? How could he? How could he even _walk_?! Draco himself could barely fucking move his chest muscles enough to breathe, he felt entirely smashed, there was no way in hell he was getting up until the evening, he was destroyed! That fucking freight train of a Weasley...

Wait... did he just call  him “his”!? He did say “ _my reliable blondie_ ” didn’t he!? Or did he hear him wrong?! Because that would just be too damn surreal! Being claimed by the redhead, even if in such a small and insignificant situation such as returning an insult, had Draco close his eyes and smile blissfully as never before. _His_... he was his indeed... ginger had no idea....

He heard him sing in the shower, his deep voice resonating from the tiled walls and it amused him to no end. Weasley was just a big bundle of joy, wasn’t he?! A big fucking bear of a man, radiating all that heat and happiness and just incredibly sexy and manly and... Draco heard himself moan quietly... Honestly, he was falling apart at the seams... and it didn’t matter because he cannot lose him... not just yet.

So when he heard him get out of the shower and fumble around the bathroom, he did his best to look as good as sin, leaning back on his elbows, stretching his long limbs and trying to project innocence, though only succeeding in looking every bit like a shagged out big white cat, which worked just as well. But when the bathroom door finally opened and Ron showed up, smelling incredible, with small streams of water still pooling at the pit of his long neck, Draco's throat went dry and his strategy fell forgotten.

“When can I see you again?” he blurted, practically unable to stop his eyes from trying to devour him as he looked every bit a pagan god that somehow got misplaced in his bathroom. Silent, as if trying to buy time, Ron reached for the towel and tried to dry his hair, finally mumbling “ _oh, blimey, screw it!_ ”, going for his wand and producing a drying spell. Still standing by the door as if he couldn’t decide what to do, he allowed himself a moment longer to observe the tempting blond sprawled on the bed.

“I don’t think this is such a good idea...” he finally spoke quickly, gentleness and finality mixing in his voice that made Draco’s heart freeze in his chest. “We can’t take this anywhere, Malfoy... and my life is more complicated as it should be already, you’re well aware of that,” he managed a small smile, remembering his taunting in the Hogwarts bathroom, barely an hour ago but already feeling like belonging to another reality.

“Then at least do me a favour!” blurted Draco on a sudden whim, determined not to give in just yet. “Bring me my stuff from school after the classes. My school bag should still be in the bathroom; together with another package... and that one at least is very valuable, I’d really like to have it back today, if you don’t mind...”

“But aren’t you going back?” Ron was confused. “We’ve still got classes, at least two hours of it in the afternoon, and you know this is important...”

“Weasley, I don’t need you to lecture me on the importance of my education, thank you very much!” cut Draco in his usual annoyed voice, because Weasley was shifting his attention to entirely insignificant matters such as school and he really couldn’t have that.

But when he saw Ron just shake his head and move towards the door, he silently cursed his untameable tongue and hurried to stop him: “Ron, please... just look at me!”

The sound of his name, so unfamiliar from this haughty mouth was enough to stop Ron in his tracks.

“Look at me,” repeated Draco softly, expertly working his hesitance. “I’m so bloody shagged out it’s a wonder I can _breathe_. I can’t possibly _sit_ through the rest of the day and it will be a small wonder if I can sit through the rest of the _blasted week_! You _destroyed_ me!” he complained with mocked insolence and watched his blue eyes grow wide in surprise.

“Sorry,” mumbled Ron in an honestly apologetic voice, as if he only now realized what he put the blond Slytherin through.

“Well I’m not,” Draco cut brutally through his words before he could spell it out that he was sorry for coming. “No one ever fucked me like you did... have me come within an inch of my sanity... it felt like... never mind, just keep in mind that coming from _me_ , _that_ is really saying something... you big ginger oaf!” he smiled at him brilliantly with deliberate recognition in his grey eyes, because suddenly there was a lump in his throat and he felt he couldn’t go on without spilling the truth.

And truth was not welcome, it was not acceptable.

It took a long moment of silence in which his thoughts ran frantically like mice in the maze: What if this doesn’t work? What if Weasley saw right through him, how desperate he was, how much more he needed than just mind-blowing sex? What if he scared him away?

But then Ron turned towards the door, almost letting Draco’s heart slip to the ground and shatter, when he threw one of his invincible blue glances back across his shoulder and said matter-of-factly:

“Until tonight, then, Malfoy... Don’t forget to lower the wards or I’ll let your precious stuff rot in the street!” Draco blew a kiss into the closing door playfully, but collapsed flat on the bed when he heard the soft pop of the disapparation.

“Oh, Ron... what am I going to do with you...? You’re driving me crazy...” he sighed desperately and let his mind drift away, unconsciously smiling at the sweet memories.


	26. Something new is born

_"I will not cause pain_

_without allowing_

_something new to be born,”_

_says the Lord._

Isaiah 66:9

 

“Where on God’s bloody Earth were you!?” barked Harry at his best mate, unceremoniously grabbing him by the arm. It took the raven-haired youth less than fifteen minutes to locate the redhead after the latter apparated back to Hogwarts. Ron used it well, summoning Draco’s stuff and storing it safely for a visit he promised the blond for later. As soon as he returned to the classroom, he was met by a very worried looking McGonagall, who informed him that Professor Potter was urgently looking for him. And Harry was beside himself indeed, when he finally found him. He lost no time cornering him and he didn’t think twice about discretion, doing so in the busy corridor, attracting many a curious look.

“I was worried out of my mind! What the hell happened?! I heard that you got into some kind of a row with bloody Malfoy! I swear to god, if that pointed-faced ferret starts with his antics again, I’ll have him removed before he can spell his precious father’s name! That insolent git! If he thinks...”

“For fuck’s sake, Harry, don’t give yourself a brain haemorrhage!” interrupted Ron, more than a little annoyed with his best mate’s assumption that he wasn’t able to take care of himself.

“Do you really think I’m not up to one screaming Malfoy!?” he asked and suddenly thought “ _well_ …” and swallowed a smile at the double meaning of those words. Seriously, he needed to get his act together, or he will irreparably damage what they had with Harry, and Malfoy... well, whatever they had was simply too confusing and definitely not worth it. Right?

“I’m here, ain’t I? And unharmed, as you can bloody well see for yourself! You’re just attracting too much unnecessary attention!” he hissed at the raven-haired Gryffindor, but seconds later rolled up his eyes in regret and just a tad of shame when he saw a hurt look in the green orbs. “Oh, for fuck’s sake, come here...”

He turned around and went straight to the first empty bathroom, which happened to be the very one where his encounter with Malfoy took place. He didn’t look twice if Harry was following, because he knew his mate better than that. Sure enough, moments later Harry appeared, carefully sealing the door behind him and Ron pulled him in one of his bear-hugs.

“Hey...” he said softly, when Harry hugged him for dear life. “Come on, Potter... it’s only been two hours since you’ve seen me!”

“Two... of the longest... blasted... hours... in my life!” said Harry feverishly, trying to stick as many kisses as he could between his words. “Sweet Godric... I don’t know how I’m going to make it through the rest of the day without you...”

“You’re just such an impossible sap...” said Ron gently, careful to return every single one of the feverishly imposed signs of affection. “I’m going to miss you, too... it’s going to be a bloody long weekend...” he complained, eliciting a right grunt of despair from Harry, who only now remembered that weekends belonged to his wife.

“Maybe we could all do something... meet at the Burrow for lunch... make Molly happy...” he proposed hopefully and beamed when Ron considered his idea and nodded carefully.

“Maybe...” he said thoughtfully and added: “There’s no way you can get rid of Ginny, you know... you shouldn’t even try, or she’ll come to suspect something. I don’t know whether Hermione is coming back for the weekend, but it’s going to be a shit load of work trying to hang out completely by ourselves, wives and kids running around! If we're to keep this to ourselves...”

“No matter,” said Harry beamingly, head over heals with the idea that he will at least get to see his lover during the weekend. “I’ll be a good boy, I promise! Just as long as I’m near you. I’ll be the best husband a wedding ring can buy!”

“Well, don’t you go forgetting about what it says on that ring of yours, Mr. Potter,” the redhead reminded him playfully and Harry almost melted into him. “How could I, silly... it’s all I think about... all day... yours, always...” 

And after that, words were forgotten for a while, because Harry could find no better entertainment than to indulge his day-long desire to sink onto those wonderful lips and have himself spoilt beyond reason.

“Ron...” he finally panted, breathless... “I don’t know if I can do this...”

“Sure you can!” said Ron adamantly and kissed him hard one last time. “You take the memory of this straight back to your loving wife and give her what she wants best – ugh, no, no details, it’s my sister after all!” when Harry opened his mouth to object. “There’s no way around it, remember? She doesn’t have to know what goes on in your head and you’ll pay your dues to me soon enough, Potter!” he threatened him quietly and playfully, but a provoking spark in his blue eyes made Harry swallow a lump in his throat.

“Fine... fine, since you’re so anxious to get rid of me!” pouted Harry and earned himself a slap on the butt. “Heeey! Playing it unfair!”

“Oh, sorry... Professor Potter,” – a silent grunt by Harry – “it’s just such a nice sweet piece of arse, I really don’t see how it could go to waste unslapped...”

“I hate you,” said Harry miserably, looking down at his neglected proof of arousal, and watched the chuckling redhead make it for the door.

“Hey, Ron!” he called after him, a sudden thought appearing out of nowhere. “What did you do to Malfoy? No one has seen him since!”

“Well,” said Ron, staring towards the ceiling as if he was trying to block a smile. “Let’s just say I put him straight to bed. _Destroyed_ , I believe, he put it.”

“Oh, Ron, you can’t be serious... what did you do?” said Harry, suddenly worried for a whole different reason. “Don’t get yourself expelled!”

“Oh, don’t worry... let’s say I didn’t do anything I would regret,” smiled the ginger somewhat enigmatically and disappeared through the door.

 ~

Draco was anxious and he didn’t like the feeling. Not one bit. He was not familiar with it, he was not comfortable with it and why on Salazaar’s bloody Earth would he have to be anxious about meeting Weasley again!? The man has seen him cry, he fucked him into insanity and back and made him scream his brains out, what _possible cause_ could he still have to be so jittery!? And yet he was, there was no denying it. Perhaps it had a little something to do with the feeling that this was the crucial battle, his last chance to persuade the redhead that he was worth coming back to and the thought just made him a nervous wreck.

What if he just throws his belongings at him and turns around before even crossing the threshold? Or worse, just leaves everything in front of the door, never entering, just like he threatened? Maybe he somehow smelled that Draco was after him, after _keeping_ him, actually, and he decided that this was just not his game, not worth it - and turned away...? The Slytherin was scared of the void he felt inside at this impossible thought. He cannot lose this game, not tonight. He has to play perfect. He was making himself anxious, he realized, and he couldn’t have that.

He’s put so much into this, risking his father’s wrath, his mother’s disappointment, his social standing, his reputation of a ladies’ man and _all_ of his friends. And for Weasley, of all people. Because he was worth it. Draco couldn’t believe it himself, when he thought of it, but there you go: life really found a funny twisted way to get back at him, making him fall for the one person that brought out the worst and the best in him.

He tried to calm down, and see Weasley from his father’s perspective - poor, supported by his wife, no career, no school, three little kids hanging by his neck, why should he possibly fuss about this man? – and found that none of it mattered.

He - dammit, why was it so hard to admit even to himself?!- well, he was just… _a little bit_ infatuated with the redhead, that’s what it all came down to. Oh, screw it: he _loved_ everything about him! He loved his beautiful ocean-blue eyes that usually sparkled with joy for life and affection and could momentarily turn into such thunderous dark pools that they had him shiver at the display of hidden power. He loved his flaming hair – Merlin, did he _ever_ love it! – the way it slipped all silky and warm through his fingers, spreading the essence of Ron all over the place. And that essence, his smell… Draco was sure if he could bottle it and patent it, he’d never need his father’s money again. That stuff could make him rich. That’s how happiness smelled.

And though he could think of a thousand different reasons to love the ginger – his freckles, his impossible heart-stopping smile, his giant warm body and skilled large hands with smart fingers – nah, it really wouldn’t do to start thinking about that _now_ – it really came down to one thing for Draco. Ron made him feel whole. Whole and warm and complete and completely happy. When he was around, he was all that mattered. Draco was sure that if he could make the redhead go with him to the Manor, he could look his father and mother in the eye and say, no fear, just pride: _This is who I chose_. He knew he could do it with him by his side. And he knew that he would never have to.

It was impossible, this thing between them. Ron’s life already a mess, his own so galaxies different that this little universe they shared when they touched that Draco couldn’t imagine their worlds ever really colliding into one. But it didn’t stop him from trying to make it so. Because he couldn’t imagine going on without… _this_.

He thought he has been irreparably damaged during the war. He entirely lost his sense of self, he lost his innocence, his sleep, his dreams, _all of his dreams_. Except that one moment of time not even the Dark Lord knew about: the moment when a 14-year-old Ron Weasley kissed him and opened up the door into the world an arrogant self-centred git by the name of Draco Malfoy never knew existed. A touch that made him human, soft lips that made him yearn for more, a memory of his youth and warmth and hope that can never be forgotten.

So when he saw him again, a ginger lion against the background of the brilliant green meadow of Hogwarts, he felt as if he stumbled upon his old self again, alive and breathing and wanting. He knew he could get it all back, the hopes, the dreams, the future, the joy, even the youthful innocence, if he could only have this man to himself again. And already he felt more alive and nervous and jittery, like a teenager really, just thinking about having him back in his – how did he call it? - “ _snake lair_ ”, was it? – and all the possibilities that lay open… If he could only persuade him to stay… just a while… until he could let him know that he needs him…

And Draco, frankly, had no idea, how to do that, not without scaring him away. And that’s why he was nervous. He knew he can handle the whole presentation part of it - making himself look dashing as he bloody well knew he was – but he knew none of it would matter to Ron and if he wanted to keep him… or at least, keep him coming back – he’s going to have to spell it out why. And Weasley could be as oblivious as they came and talking about feelings was never Draco Malfoy’s forte. That’s what was killing him.

So just to make himself brave, he fire-called mother, told her he’s got “social obligations” and won’t be returning home tonight – both always made her happy, because she was certain he should be… well, enjoying his _good fortune_ , was what she called it and knowing her well, he knew she was hoping that maybe in the process, this or the other young lady would have captured his fancy permanently.

But for Draco it was never about girls. It was never about boys either, come to think of it. He was drawn to power and challenge and whoever presented that in abundance, was sure to capture his fancy. Small wonder, Weasley was his poison – Draco could recognise the master of puppets with his eyes closed, Potter would be nothing but a pawn on Weasley’s chessboard, if it wasn’t for the small matter that the redhead was actually in love with him. His greatest weakness, his strongest ace.

Draco couldn’t really say that it pained him that Weasley was so clearly infatuated with another; it just irritated him, that it had to be bloody Potter. But no matter, there was nothing for it now. He would have to find a way, a place of his own in Ron Weasley’s life, he’s just going to have to work for it a bit harder than holly Potty ever did. That man was literally born with everything in his cradle, wasn’t he!? _Erm_ … well, perhaps not, that was more of a sound description of himself, but for some reason Draco found that everything worth having went to Potter without even trying and he, even from his privileged position, had to kill himself over every little detail.

Such as Weasley, the unimportant side-kick. A small insignificant decorated war-hero, who just happened to look like some pagan sex god bothered to reincarnate and who managed to capture the heart of just about anyone he encountered. Himself included.

So, yeah, there you go, he had every reason to be nervous and jittery and whatever else there was of this rot. And the longer the shadows of the evening crept in, the more restless he became. He knew he was naked without his haughtiness and sarcasm and he couldn’t bloody well throw himself around the redhead’s neck the second he saw him, could he now? And yet he was anxious and careful about trying to mask what a mess he was with his well-versed arrogance: Weasley was no longer a predictable youth with short temper and poor vocabulary – the way he radiated sublime confidence really knocked Draco off his rocker and made him uncertain about his ways and his attitude.

So there was really no playing it safe, was there? - and that lead Draco to one unexpected decision: to throw caution to the wind and play it by the ear this once. It didn’t make him any less nervous, but at least he stopped re-running the stupid “ _How about if I..._ ” projections in his head. He busied himself with fiddling around, trying to make the flat and himself look casually stunning, though not overdone - but the minutes just wouldn’t tick away any faster.

So when he finally heard the soft pop of apparition his heart skipped a beat and when he opened the door, he really didn’t know what he expected of himself anymore...

Certainly not this.


	27. All the pieces fall to place...

“Finally! For Merlin’s sake, Weasley, if I sent you to fetch death, we’d all have three hundred years to live! You sure took your time getting here! I’d be better off sending my house elf; if this thing in the package was alive it would have been dead by now!”

He stared at incredulous blue eyes and suddenly panic flushed over him like a hot tide. What on Salazaar’s bloody Earth was he thinking?! He really blew it now, didn’t he?! He had half a day to get ready for this and _this_ is what his fucked up Malfoyian brain came up with?! What a bloody fucking mess, he’d be best off going home directly, set on _strangling_ father for passing such a nightmare of an attitude down his birth line!

He watched in horror as Ron shook his head and extended his arm with his belongings in it without a single word. With heart in his throat Draco tried to salvage whatever little he could:

“Well, don’t just stand there, bring it in, I don’t bite... much.”

“I’m not your house elf, Malfoy,” finally said Ron quietly. “Take your stuff, or I’ll make sure it’s damaged, before I drop it.” The threat in his voice was unmistakable and Draco was staring at him helpless, suddenly lost for words.

“Weasley...” he said, trying to sound more certain than he felt, but entirely unable to continue.

“That would be _“Thank you for coming, Weasley. Would you please come in?”_ Right? Or was all that good breeding lost on you as you cannot even keep it civil?” said Ron smoothly, his voice rich and deep and eyes so stormy that Draco felt his throat go dry.

“Yes... please.... come in...” he croaked, unable to take eyes of this alpha male, with no strength to move and think on his own.

“I’d love to. I could use a drink, you know...” said Ron casually and pushed right past him, brushing against him in a narrow passage under the doorframe and almost causing him to collapse at the sudden rush of sensations.

Ron carefully placed the package, still magically wrapped as it was, on the glass table and carelessly dropped his school bag on the floor by the couch.

“So where do you keep it?” he asked matter-of-factly as Draco stared at him, numb and dazed. “The drinks,” spelt Ron slowly as if talking to a mentally incapacitated person as was, in fact, the matter.

“You clearly have no intention of serving it to me - I knew Malfoys’ were a stingy lot, but _seriously_? – I think it best to pour a glass myself before I hit the road. C’mon, Malfoy, _you_ invited _me_ over, remember?” finally sounding annoyed by the blond’s unresponsiveness. “The least you can do is to share some of that “best of the best” butterbeer with me – or firewhiskey, perhaps, now that’s a thought! Oh, look, you’ve got Ogden’s, small wonder you wanted to hide that from me and keep it for your more glamorous friends...”

Ron was clearly determined to get his drink as he unceremoniously walked to the kitchenette and opened every cupboard until he found what he wanted.

And Draco was still standing there, rooted to the floor, dumbfounded by his presence, mesmerised by his untamed adamant air, and his long fingers automatically opened and closed around the glass of brown liquid Ron pressed into his hand. Ron downed one big gulp of a drink and clacked his tongue.

“Lovely stuff, that... So... Malfoy... what is this all about?”

Draco quickly put a sip of liquid into his mouth to buy time and felt it burn his tongue. He didn’t expect such a frontal attack. He should have. This was Weasley after all. No tact there, whatsoever. Ron stared at him, glass still casually positioned in his hand, apparently carefully studying his face.

“Why am I here, Malfoy?” he repeated quietly, as if he had no answer for this question and wanted one from Draco.   

“Well,” Draco said with uncertainty in his voice – dammit, where were years of etiquette on keeping small talk, when you needed them?! “As it is... I wanted you to come over... to give you a present.”

“ _You_?! Wanted to give _me_ a present?!” Ron spoke incredulously as if this was the most out-of-this-world matter he’d ever heard.

“Oh, this is good, Malfoy... So... let’s see it... where is it, that _present_ of yours?” he said with a small smirk, clearly convinced that the blond was making it up as he went. After all, the Slytherin couldn’t have planned that they were going to end up here in the first place and he had said himself he didn’t have the strength to leave the flat – how could he possibly have a present ready for him?!

Draco silently pointed to the package, so carefully placed on the table and watched Ron’s eyes go wide and impossibly blue.

“This...? This _expensive_ thing is for me? And you had me deliver it myself... really, Malfoy... all these years and still I underestimate you... So what is it?” he asked, suddenly suspicious.

“Open it,” said Draco quietly, staring at him without a blink, lest he miss the moment that will decide his future.

“It’s not dangerous, I promise,” he added quickly after seeing Ron’s obvious hesitation. “Wizard’s honour!”

“Hmp.... more like Slytherin’s honour… might as well run for my life!” the ginger grunted, but complied.

His big calloused fingers fumbled with the expensive paper and discrete classy ribbon until he managed to get rid of it and pulled the lid open. He stared at the open package, the blue of his eyes reflecting the beautiful deep purple fabric of a soft silken shirt, the fabric so rich it almost glowed in the dark of the small apartment catching the feeble light of the street lamps in its folds.

“You got me a shirt...” Ron said, confusion mixing with awe. “It’s beautiful.”

Upon seeing his little-boy face, face of someone who never got anything special and just for him, Draco finally found his voice:

“You gave me yours, when I really needed it. It was the least I could do. Only the best for the best,” he added, a lump forming in his throat when the blue eyes suddenly floated up to meet with his grey and his heart almost went into an over-drive.

“Try it on?” he whispered hopefully, unable to break the gaze.

Ron gave the tiniest of nods and his fingers slipped to the top of his robes, slowly going to work, undoing one tiny button, then another... and another... Draco felt the rush of arousal hit him like a freight-train. Spellbound by the precise movement of the skilled fingers, his breath laborious at the slowly expanding sight of the muscled pale chest, visibly hitching at the hint of dark nubs, Draco Malfoy watched Ron Weasley undress himself and felt like he was about to come at the erotic charge these silent moments held for him.

Just a small press of Ron’s mouth hinted that he was holding back unexpressed feelings, but his beautiful pale freckled face stayed as calm as a mask, his eyes focused on Draco’s face as if he wanted to let him know without words that this private show was for him only. Finally he let the robes fall to the ground and he stood in front of him, faded jeans barely covering his hips, swallowing a faint stream of ginger hair leading from his navel downwards. It was all Draco could do to hold back a moan.

Ron’s long fingers sunk into the box and brought out a beautiful silken shirt, unlike any he’s ever owned before. Fuck, he’s never even _seen_ anything like this before, this thing had a life of its own, capturing light, smelling new, feeling as smooth as tepid water of the magical spring. He broke the gaze for a moment to admire it, unaware of the glow it reflected in his impossibly blue eyes, then took it out of the expensive looking box and held it in front of him.

“Help me?” he said in a husky voice and Draco moved towards him as if in a dream. Ron slipped it on, silken fabric whispering around his body and the blond’s fingers moved to release the silken waterfall of fiery hair. Once he sunk his fingers in it, warm and scented he found he could hardly let go. His eyes looked at Ron pleadingly as if he hoped to convey all of his overloaded emotion wordlessly and the redhead’s long fingers slowly slipped around his wrists and brushed over his pulse. Gently he rubbed his face against his palm, making Draco’s mouth quiver at the touch and then moved his hands slowly, as if regretting it, towards the silver buttons.

“Close it,” he asked quietly. “I want to see how it looks on me properly…” And Draco’s fingers obediently went to work. His hands were shaking and he slipped several times clumsily, finding one excuse after another to keep touching the glowing white skin that was slowly disappearing in front of his eyes. But he got to the end at last, leaving one last button at the neck undone, because he simply didn’t trust himself enough to go any nearer that silky ginger hair - and the image of Ron stopped his heart.

Madame Malkin has really outdone herself this time. The redhead look absolutely dashing, there was no other word for it. The shirt fit him like second skin, accentuating his broad shoulders and narrow hips and making his white skin glow almost fluorescent blue. With the background of his fiery red hair, glittering like dried blood in the faint light of the street-lights, he looked almost like one of the immortals that were pictured on the romantic novels his mother sometimes hid in her locked drawer. Draco couldn’t move his eyes away from the shirt, his eyes devouring every contour of the muscles moving underneath, bewitched by the play of light on the folds and dead frightened to look up, into that stunning face that was staring right at him.

Finally Ron’s finger slipped under his chin and he lifted his face effortlessly, capturing his eyes. And if Draco had a master strategy ready, it would have evaporated to nothing in that moment. Ron’s eyes were shining from within and his youthful freckled face was so close, Draco felt himself shudder helplessly.

“Thank you,” whispered that beautiful soft mouth before it moved on to capture his. Just a warm kiss, almost chaste, no tongue this time, but it just wouldn’t end. Their lips kept on finding each other, exploring the tenderness none of them could understand, until Ron stopped it and broke Draco’s heart. He simply leaned his forehead against Draco’s, his big hand sunk in Slytherin’s blond hair, not letting go. His eyes were closed and his breathing was a notch too high, as if he was fighting something, someone, a demon he couldn’t let win.

“Take it off,” he finally demanded. “This thing has magic woven right into its core, I can feel it in every fibre… just take it off,” his eyes suddenly opened and his blue eyes were staring at the blond from such close proximity that it made Draco’s insides twist in liquid hot desire.

Ron’s hand finally slipped out of the blond’s hair and he stretched himself to his full height, going for a bit of distance. The back of Draco’s head still felt warm even when the long strong fingers disappeared from it and he almost swayed on his feet at the sudden loss of support. He reached out to his body, to find his grip, masking the wobbliness in his knees by going for the first button.

This time he began on top, slowly undoing one button after another until the landscape of emerging pale skin showed first signs of that tempting trail of red hair, disappearing into faded jeans. His breathing all but erratic now, Draco’s fingers held on to the edge of the magical silken fabric, unwilling to let go though there were no more buttons to undo. Transfixed by that barely visible trail of fine fiery hair parting the flat muscled stomach, sown with specks of golden dust of freckles, he kept his eyes focused on his hands, not willing to understand that this might be it, that his game was over.

And suddenly big hands covered his palms and lifted them gently onto the redhead’s shoulders.

“I said… take it off… all the way…” whispered Ron and Draco’s shaking hands disappeared under the shirt, finally sinking into that infernally hot white skin that made him shiver and yearn for a touch in every single one of his dreams.

Slowly caressing his shoulders, incredibly muscled and almost square at the collar bones, he gently pushed the silken fabric down and had it stop at the wrists, caught by the massive fists, not fitting smoothly through the cuffs. Suddenly with a full view of that impossibly sexy body, Draco’s throat went dry and his head felt light. He knew this was an open invitation and the blond didn’t have it in him to stop when it was still safe. Ron wasn’t moving away, he was just standing there, his for the taking, and Draco couldn’t keep away.

Shyly at first, Draco’s long narrow hands crept up Ron’s long neck to explore and remember its length and its fragility with a touch. When he felt the ginger’s freight-train pulse right underneath his fingers, Draco followed a sudden urge to squeeze them around his neck just a little and he felt his own cock respond violently to the tension of hot life struggling underneath his skin. A small moan between pleasure and pain and Draco lost it for good.

“Shit, Weasley… You’re _my_ present,” he whispered feverishly, crushed under the weight of his unfulfilled fantasies and watched a small sexy smile escape the redhead’s soft mouth.

Ron leaned forward just a fraction and breathed in his ear: “Then I guess you'll have to unwrap me, Malfoy…”

And Draco didn’t have to be asked twice. Suddenly every bit a Slytherin, he wrapped his tongue around a silver necklace with a Griffindor lion softly ringing against Ron's skin and let his mouth almost swallow it. His lips sensually moving up the chain, they reached his neck and began worshiping every inch of that tender soft flesh, sucking on the cords of his neck, licking alongside collar-bones, all the time controlling the tension in that beautiful swan neck with a necklace that was still at the bottom of his mouth. A tug here and there assured Weasley’s cooperation and Draco was enjoying that game of control and giving in they were playing beyond anything.

His mouth hungrily found his dark nubs and began working them expertly, soon eliciting small moans and soft hisses and soon his smart fingers sneaked up to join his tongue until the dark peaks stood hard and fully erect, waiting for his touch. And Ron just let him. Barely able to believe his luck Draco sunk to his knees and allowed his fingers to continue their slow travel down the golden specks of pale skin, across the sensitive rib-cage and the hard muscles of the stomach, forever sinking lower, all the way to the hint of the exposed hip bones and around his narrow waist and back up his muscled back, where Draco’s gentle touch made him shudder just a little and elicited a soft sigh.

Yet Ron never touched him. Hands still caught in the cuffs, letting them hang limply as if he was surrendering himself to the mercy of the feverish Slytherin, he just stared down at the blond head working for his pleasure and his chest was moving ever so rapidly. His only form of cooperation were soft puffs of hot air, a quiet moan here and there and a hiss, when Draco’s eager fingers took too much liberty with his magnificent form.

“God… so beautiful,” moaned Draco needily, because he knew there was no way in hell he could take this much further without a touch, his touch. And then just like that, he was pulled up as if no force was required at all. Staring down the stormy blue eyes, he lost his mind, his every thought, his breath.

“You want me... Draco?” he suddenly felt a soft whisper teasing his ear and he closed his eyes and felt the soft lips sucking on his ear-lobe.

“Yes, oh God… yesssss…. more than anything,” he almost choked out the truth as if it was not obvious enough already and this was an emergency.

“Ask me,” purred Ron in his ear and Draco knew that he was being played like a fiddle, but he couldn’t care less.

“Please, Weasley... “

“Ron,” the redhead interrupted with a soft whisper tickling his nerves, making him weak at the knees. “If we’re going to do this, you’re going to have to call me by the name my mother gave me...”

“ _Pleaseron_...” blurted Draco, so aroused he could not put up a fight if his life depended on it. “Please, Ron,” he obediently repeated softly, the name suddenly sweet in his mouth. “Ron... please... stay with me...”

A long moment of silence, suspense and warm breath against Draco’s ear, working him into oblivion.

 “Tonight... I think... I will...” at last the hot whisper and suddenly those big hands crept around his waist and pulled him closer. Finally that burning body was hard pressed against him and Draco couldn’t believe that something that moments ago looked so cast in stone, could radiate that much heat, boiling his blood from within. Once in his element, the infernal redhead was all over him like a massive wave.

Shirt suddenly gone effortlessly, it pooled on the floor forgotten, for what they had was much more precious. Ron’s hands were finally free to possess what was his for the taking, waiting so eagerly to be claimed and he was not pulling the breaks.

He lost no time and none of his god-given talents to have Draco moan loudly, shivering under his touch, feverishly cursing and begging for release.

“I came back to you, my beautiful silver snake... I just couldn’t stay away...” Ron whispered, undressing him with abandon, not caring for the ruined fabric and the trail of marks his roughness left on Draco’s alabaster skin. “I don’t know why I’m here, but my body does... it needs you, Draco, it needs to feel you, to wake you, to consume you, gorgeous,” he whispered and Draco’s knees finally gave in, his only grip in the large hands around his waist.

Sinking his long fingers in that fiery hair, that was his ultimate poison, Draco desperately sought out his mouth, that heavenly mouth that spoke blurred words of desire and surrender between mind-blowing kisses, making him so undone, he couldn’t even think coherently enough to tell him how badly he wanted him.

But apparently Ron knew. He had him, body and soul, between his legs and all over his aching heart, blowing his mind with thousand and one tenderness and savagery until there was no more Draco and Ron, they were one entity, joined in a deadly dance of lust and love, writhing and shivering, seducing and probing, shoving and mounting, begging and giving... just giving it _all_ until the world exploded around them and into another dimension. Once again Draco was screaming his lover’s name and his heart to God and Ron helplessly watched himself come so hard that he could only roar his impossible desire, his incredible release, crying out his name with every violent shove, over and over again.

Sex was... not of this world. Draco just laid there, completely empty and wonderfully filled up to the very edge of his physical body. They never made it to the bed and there were signs of their need and passion all over the plush carpet: broken coffee table, shredded clothes, knocked over chairs and incredible smell of sex. Somehow Draco found himself on top of that divinely hot erratically breathing body, but with his shaft still filling him hard. He had no idea how he got there, he had no will to ever move again. Actually, he might try to murder the next person that suggested moving or changing his position in the slightest, because this was perfect just the way it was. He could barely open his eyes, but he wanted to watch that flushed freckled face, bathing in sweat underneath, with long golden eyelashes still closed and mind safely harboured in a reality outside this one. He could never get tired of watching that pretty face, he wanted to own him so bad...

“Stop staring at me, it tickles...” the redhead mumbled unexpectedly and opened his stunning blue eyes to take a peek at the world. And Draco almost fell off the edge of his planet when he saw his own face reflect in those eyes. For some reason that moved him almost to tears and he desperately needed to hide his weakness.

“Weas... Ron,” he corrected himself quickly. “Don’t be absurd... how can watching tickle, you big oaf...”

“Well, it does...” insisted the lovely ginger, corners of his mouth slightly turned upwards in a gentle smile that indicated he was teasing him. “I can feel your eyes on me and then your breath catches on my lips and...” he never got to finish the sentence. Draco needed more of him, he needed to eat this playful innocence out of his mouth, to feed off that tenderness and beauty and warmth Ron had in abundance. Sinking down on his lips he hoped to silence him, to show him how much he gave him and how desperate he was for more. Because he had no words for this.

He felt his big palms travelling down his naked back, making him shudder and feel strangely secure in their warmth and when he felt Ron’s shaft softly pop out of his body, he whimpered in disappointment.

“Just...” he wanted to beg for another minute of that closeness, though stolen from another, perhaps false in every other world but this, but he had no other world to live in and this was his only reality. This was where Draco Malfoy came to life and he never wanted it to end.

“Don’t...” said Ron softly. “I’m not going anywhere just yet, but I don’t want to hurt you... I’m yours for tonight, remember?” he reminded him gently and Draco closed his eyes, strangely comforted for the moment. That’s what getting a Gryffindor in your bed will do to you, if anything, you can trust the lot.

He put his blond head on top of the ginger’s chest and slowly slipped into exhausted sleep in the rhythm of his heart. Ron watched him sleep and upon noticing goose-bumps on his long thin arms, he pulled his robes closer, covering them both. He continued to watch him, long eyelashes casting shadow on patrician cheek-bones, spelling out vulnerability, long aquiline nose that gave his face character and surprisingly soft mouth that spoke of hidden passion residing in this haughty looking man.

“So beautiful...” he whispered once again “And so lonely...”

He finally knew why he was here, why he was so drawn to this arrogant-looking obnoxious-acting young man that turned his youth into misery every chance he got and yet came looking for him when he felt most vulnerable. He understood what he represented to Draco, whose future was always secure and cast in stone, his existence unquestionable, any transgression unacceptable. The war brutally tore the old Draco from the safe nest of his comfortable life and threw him in the chaos of raw survival and unimaginable savagery he had no weapons to defend himself from. All he believed true was gone, the persons whom he trusted the most put him in there, old friends proved themselves capable of unspeakable cruelty and once enemies became his only friends. Who would not go mad and crumble in such a world?

Draco needed to reinvent himself, to find his grip in this new world and he came to him, lost, hurt and hopeful, because he knew Ron would understand. And something in Ron responded to his need with more force he ever thought possible. Not only was he Molly’s son, unable to turn away anyone in dire need; this went deeper, perhaps all the way into the magic they shared through their family tree. It was like a part of him was a piece of puzzle that fit perfectly with Draco Malfoy and none other. Strangely enough that part had a lot to do with unbelievable physical attraction and crazy sexual tension, but it was also much more than that.

Because Ron’s world also all but went to ashes in front of his eyes in that blasted war. He was more acutely aware of it, than Harry or Hermione, because they never grew up in it like he did, defined by the security and dangers the magic provided. They could both survive as Muggles and Ron knew that out of the three, he would struggle the most. As insecure as he always was about his worth in the world, he never knew any other reality than the world of magic he grew up in and his trust in the rules and boundaries it provided was absolute. His mother could fix everything, the twins were inseparable and unbeatable as a team, he was always going to go to Hogwarts, there was always going to be hatred between the Weasleys and the Malfoys – and suddenly none of those things were true anymore in this new world.

His mother couldn’t bring Fred back; George was all but crippled by the death of his twin, sometimes talking to himself as if he was still around, then hiding for hours to mourn his sorrow at the bottom of the bottle; him not continuing his education at Hogwarts was shrugged off as insignificant and suddenly he was in bed with one Draco Malfoy, fucking him through the floor, unable to tear himself away.

Mad, mad world indeed. He supposed that having Malfoy for his sworn enemy would have been strangely comforting to him, as if looking back into the past that didn’t exist anymore. But Ron that rose out of the ashes of the war had seen enough of what hatred could do and chose a different path. He found his strength in bravely adopting his role of a husband, a father, even a best friend-turned-lover, developing a new kind of self-assuredness when he saw how loved, wanted and needed he was. As far as Ron went, everybody needed that kind of love in their lives. And Malfoy had none.

His family lost its reputation, his friends were just acquaintances, he had nothing left but money and stretching out his hand to a Weasley was a clear indication how little of the old arrogant boy there was left under a cold detached surface that bore no scratch from what he went through. But Ron only had to look into the bottom of those grey haughty eyes to find how very lost and broken and hungry he was. How could Ron not give him what he so desperately desired when he had so much of it in abundance? It was not pity what he felt for Malfoy, what they had simply felt right.

Though it shouldn’t, really; in fact, it was wrong on so many levels, it was ridiculous: he was married, for fuck’s sake, and to the one person Malfoy despised above all; not to mention that he was in love with another whom the blond loved to hate! He had kids to consider and Malfoy will one day have his own as well – he was late in picking a wife already, as the families with only one child were extremely vulnerable and if something happened to Draco it would be the end of a grand wizarding pureblood family line. Not to mention that their social standings were worlds apart and frankly he wasn’t even sure if they liked each other enough not to attempt murder if they ever bothered to talk longer than two minutes. But it all came down to nothing when he looked into the grey eyes sewn with golden specks and saw raw need in there, unspoken hunger for love and warmth that were in the redhead’s very essence.

There was hardly a more loving wizarding family around as the Weasleys and Ron was born with love and love for life as an intricate part of his being. That’s what he was all about. He gave it to Harry, when the orphaned boy-who-lived needed it the most, he touched his geeky Hermione, hiding her insecurities and loneliness behind her brilliance and now Draco came looking for whatever scraps of it he could get; never asking with words, because Malfoy’s didn’t ask, they took – except Draco couldn’t, because there was nothing to take if Ron was not willing to give.

And the redhead found out he could not deny him; whatever he had inside for Draco, desperately wanted out to meet him. There was nothing to understand, no logic behind it, no argument - this could only be felt. And sometimes even someone as oblivious as Ron could be, knew when pieces of puzzle fell into place, creating perfection.


	28. Come back for more

Draco stirred restlessly on top of him, face slightly turned upwards towards him, blond silky hair tickling Ron’s torso and that inevitably elicited a smile from the ginger. Truly, the blond looked like a little boy when he slept, but somehow very Malfoyian even in his sleep. The aristocratic crease on top of his nose never smoothed out and he looked as if he was pouting like a child who was denied a candy. Ron found it incredibly endearing and he buried his big hand right in the middle of the long blond hair, all ruffled and surprisingly warm. Whenever he noticed Malfoy staring at him coldly back in school, he never thought any part of him could be warm, he looked as if cast in stone, void of all emotion but malice. That was, until he kissed him that strange fateful day and found hot life boiling under the surface of those marble lips and sensed a need to share it with someone.   

The memory of that day still painted a smile on Ron’s lips and never failed to bring along a surge of lust he wouldn’t let anyone know about. Those lips were so close now, so pouting and tempting and... well, his for the taking... he was sure Malfoy wouldn’t mind...

So he touched him lightly, careful not to wake him up and when he heard a small sigh of approval, he continued to kiss him gently, enjoying the freshness of his lips and that incredible expensive scent that seemed to be printed into his very skin. His mouth opened slightly, letting him in and it was all Ron could do, not to grunt needily when he touched the tender wetness inside with his tongue. He knew that eventually he was going to wake him up, but it was so nice to pretend that the beautiful unreachable blond was his for the taking. He could do anything he wanted to him... oh, and he wanted to do so much....

Suddenly on fire he had to keep himself and his imagination in check not to simply roll him over and take him, forcefully if need be. This was no way to treat someone as precious as Draco Malfoy. He’s going to have to seduce him, make him want it as bad as he wanted it and it was this game Ron was really good at. He learnt how to be gentle and pleading without words, playing his Hermione to succumb to his charms whenever he was a bit more up to it than she was. Men would be men and his need was always going to be greater, no matter how much his wife loved him and how many times he dreamed of another behind the closed eyelids. So he put all that seductive knowledge to work and began waking up Draco Malfoy the best he knew how.

He did roll him over and underneath in the end to gain more control, smoothly sliding his hand back into the warm strands of the blond hair. This was always good for leverage, he learnt, and he used it to pull the blond’s head back gently, to expose his neck. He slowly licked the soft inside of his mouth goodbye for now, then he let his generous lips work its way down with gentle sucking kisses that will no doubt leave marks on that transparent skin, but he was sure he could repay Draco for the small aesthetic discomfort. A few to the chin, licking all the way around it to the earlobe, where he exhaled his admiration with a hot breath and a whisper “ _hey, beautiful, don’t let me bother you, I just wanna play some…_ ”. He felt his chest expand in a sudden hitch of air, but the blond kept his eyes closed, clearly set on enjoying this game as long as it lasted.

He continued his journey down that wonderful swan neck, so pale and aristocratic as if it was not meant to be touched and it gave Ron special pleasure just to be able to. Manipulating it with the hand gently massaging his scalp, he marked the lovely neck with his mouth, sucking on his cords, finding his pulse and feeding on it like one of the immortals and had his breath hitch erratically in excitement. _So that’s what you like_ , he thought with satisfaction, placing both hands around the slender neck on a whim and just squeezed gently. He felt a jerk of muscles under his body and smiled at the obvious preference of the blond for such course of action. He let go of the pressure, but continued to massage his long neck closely with his thumbs, feeling hot life surge underneath him. Clearly Draco liked to play with fire. Nothing could give Ron more pleasure.

Licking his collar bones and outlining his shoulders with his mouth he had an idea and turned him around unceremoniously, so he had the long white landscape of his sensitive back in front of him. If Draco was surprised, he never showed it. Moving long strands of hair escaped from a loosely made plait, he found the sensitive spot on top of his spine and worked it with his mouth until he could hear him purr; moving on to the next one, spoiling him rotten with his mouth and long fingers gently pressing on all the tense sensitive muscles they encountered on a long journey to his waist, all the way down to the tailbone.

By this time he was so hard he could no longer pretend. A focused look in his eyes, he spread the blond’s arms away from his body and stretched them almost in a crucifix position, leaving the sensitive sides of his body exposed. He went to kneel between his legs and rubbed his firm buns with his large hands casually, eliciting a right shudder, before he lift his upper body effortlessly backwards and had him stretched like a bow. No objection, Draco’s head came to rest on his shoulder and he buried his head at the side of the redhead’s long neck, looking every bit like a primal sin, beautiful, fragile and animalistic.

Ron had a small sigh escape him, this was going to be even more unforgettable than he thought. Draco was posing for him and it was making him so hot and bothered he had to fight an urge to break him down in half and take him hard. But he was going to play this game to the end, just like he started, so instead he placed his hot heavy shaft between the blond’s thighs, rubbing the sensitive spot under his sack gently and earned himself a small lost moan. He smiled; that was his Draco, begging for it without words, making him know that he was ready and wanted to play. The big palms of his hands were suddenly on the front of that blasphemously gorgeous body, sliding across his skin, caressing all the sensitive parts and finally stopping on his nubs. He squeezed and rubbed the nipples hard, pinching mercilessly, simultaneously sinking his teeth into the soft spot where his neck met his shoulder and this time he was awarded by a cry; pain and lust and need all mixed in a whimpered “ _Ron, please_ …”, making him hard beyond belief, having him shove his body closer to his, as if he wanted them to melt in one.    

He could barely control himself now, his eyes transfixed on the blond’s purple long shaft leaking pre-come, he wanted to play with so bad. And then Draco’s arms hugged around their bodies, the palms of his hands suddenly placed on his arse-cheeks, squeezing gently and nails digging into his skin.

“Please… no more… take it…” he whispered. “I want to feel it in your big hands… just hold them still if you must, I promise I’ll be good, I just need your touch so badly…” Ron’s only answer was a soft puff of hot air next to his ear and a lick of the damaged flesh on his neck… but he complied and as one of his hands slid across his chest and suddenly held his neck captive with long fingers, the other one closed around his shaft gently at first, barely touching, until Draco’s body arched in a desperate attempt to rub against it and Ron chuckled softly.

“ _Good_ indeed… a Slytherin to the last fibre of his sinful body…” he whispered in his ear, outlining the shell of it with soft brushes of his tongue. “I think this boy is going to have to be punished…” Shudder and a soft moan. “But what to do with you…?” he asked innocently and began rubbing his shaft slowly and absent-mindedly, as if he was busy thinking about his punishment, his other hand slowly closing tight around the base of his neck.

“Please… fuck me!” begged Draco in a husky voice, suddenly impossible aroused at the thought how very violated this was going to leave him… and he loved the feeling. He loved feeling helpless and at the mercy of this magnificent man, hard and needy just for him, he loved his body being stretched and punished and claimed with brutal force and unfathomable tenderness. His body was already covered in a thin sheath of sweat, arching and writhing against whatever he could feel of him; the tight arse under the palms of his hands, the pulsating presence rubbing almost imperceptibly between his thighs and under his wonderfully sensitive sack, the hand closing on his breath at the bottom of his neck and the incredibly skilled hand working him expertly towards the end.

“Please, Ron… fuck me!” he begged again, because he couldn’t imagine this ending any other way than with that wonderful cock pounding into him from behind, making him see stars and feel one with him.

“Oh… I will…” said the smooth honey voice behind him, making him shudder at the promise and the words that were withheld. “But not just yet…”

He pushed him down on his fours without warning and the blond whimpered at the sudden loss of the body heat covering him from behind… and then he whimpered again for an entirely different reason, when the large palms secured his hipbones and the thumbs spread his arse apart. When he felt a long slick tongue slithering down his cleft, licking softly and probing curiously he found he was not beyond begging in earnest: “ _Ohmyfuckinggodronplease_ ….” The slick muscle broke his entrance, slurping and stabbing and licking with incredibly arousing fluttering motions that left him a raw bundle of nerves, yelping and trying to impale himself desperately on that wonderful tongue that was making him so undone. But the large hands were in control of his movements and this was Ron’s show, his display of who’s boss and Draco will endure what was to be his punishment until the redhead saw fit…

But that beautiful white arse wriggling in front of him almost made Ron come and he knew it was time to wrap it up. His self-control had its limits and Draco’s begging and sounds of pure unabated delirium of a man denied his release, were stretching it to impossible lengths. So he finally pulled himself up and entered him brutally, just like he wanted to do the whole time. His cock was slick from his pre-come and Draco’s entrance was almost pulsating in a need to take him in, so when he finally did, Draco’s pain was negligible compared to the raw desire inside of him finally being satisfied.

“Yesssss!!!” he half roared half hissed and yelped loudly at the first brush of a hard cock against his prostate. And when the large hands closed around the base of his neck, making him all but short for air, his ecstasy was unstoppable.

“Ron… ohmyfuckinggod… Ron!!!” he was screaming now at the merciless pounding, the shortage of air and unbelievably skilled cock making him see stars and fight for control over his body, so wonderfully denied, until his large hands finally moved to his shoulders for better leverage and the sudden rush of air almost exploded his chest.

“ _Motherfuckingshitdraco_ … you’re boiling me from the inside, you impossibly… beautiful… crazy bastard… you’re making my balls explode, snake… the way you wrap yourself around me… I’m gonna come so hard, I will tear you in half, you beautiful blond bitch, this is unreal…”

Ron was cursing and yelping and growling though his teeth in pleasure and frustration, all the time pounding into him with all his might, clearly in a world of his own, owning Draco, marking him, ruining him for everyone else because no one could be this forceful, no one could reach so deep inside of him, no one could bring him so close to God… no one… there was no one… no one else… just him.

Draco felt Ron’s hand wrap around his shaft, clearly desperate for him to come, but he would have come anyway, because there was no way on heaven and earth that could stop him from tumbling down the vertigo of ecstasy; every fibre in his body was begging for release, the tension pulsating through every cell of his skin was unbearable and he just needed a moment, a push, a shove… and he got it when Ron helplessly rammed inside him hissing: “Say it, goddamn you, say it! I need you to say it… need to hear it to come…”

And Draco didn’t need to be told what to say, it came out natural as this bond between them felt: “Godfuckingchrist, I love you, Ron! Ohmyfuckingmerlin I love you…” He screamed out his one desperate truth only for this man to hear, one more shove, one more whimpered: “Draco… fuck… gorgeous…” and Ron was shooting pools of warm liquid inside him, all over his prostate, howling and cursing his need, his incomprehensible attachment.

And Draco was… Draco was no more. His body dissolved all over the Universe, his magic exploded so violently his heart almost burst in his chest and his very soul was pulled out from the dark closed space where it was locked his entire life. Draco couldn’t imagine how death could be any different, how anything but this could be called Heaven. This was it. He died in the hands of one Ronald Weasley and he never wanted to come back.

When he finally felt the familiar sense of returning to the confines of his own body, he found himself buried under a mountain of hot sweaty flesh, toppled over him mercilessly, breathing so erratically it bordered on heart-attack and Weasley was chanting quietly with his eyes closed: “ _Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck…_.” Draco couldn’t help but give a short out-of-breath laugh at his eloquence that so perfectly summed up all of his feelings. Fuck, indeed. How could sex with Weasley be such a motherfucking extra-terrestrial experience?!

He tried to move as the man’s weight was almost suffocating him, but succeeded only in getting more comfortable, because Weasley clearly wasn’t going anywhere. And that was fine with Draco. He could spend the rest of his life like this, sunk into the warmth of the overwhelming body on top of his, pinning him down, giving him grip, protecting him from the cold. Finally Ron opened his eyes and Draco felt the ocean blue orbs perusing him closely.

“I’ll never know why...” he mumbled with a soft deep voice, sounding tired and sunk back onto him, snuggling against his hair, into the cave between his neck and shoulders and Draco heard himself give an exhausted hearty laugh that just couldn’t quite express how happy he felt. That was his place in this world, underneath that magnificent man, not letting him go, not turning away. He felt his mouth nibble on his skin and though he felt a shiver of pleasure, he was just too strung out to move. But Weasley was clearly the king of speed recovery, cause suddenly his head shot up and his eyes shone with a mischief when he asked innocently:

“Does this forsaken place have any food? I’m starved enough to finish an ox!” And after seeing the empty stare of disbelief Draco gave him, he just pouted: “Oh, come-the-fuck- _on_ , what is it with you people?! First Potter wants me to go all faint and beg for food and now you’re starving me as well! You can’t possibly tell me you don’t even have some of Fortescue’s Delight?! Who on Godric’s bloody earth doesn’t have some ice cream in their house?! And then they go and call this place a home!”

Still in his grunting element he got up and headed for kitchen to find something, anything and Draco just gapped at him.  Who could possibly think about food at a time like this?! Except, of course, Weasley. He remembered Ron _exactly_ like that from school – always stuffing food down his throat greedily, finding the most disgusting way to do it, successfully appalling his future wife and reducing Potter to tears of laughter. He often over-heard the Mudblood complain that the scrawny boy surely had hollow legs, because he never closed his mouth empty and never gained a pound either.

An _oral fixation_ , she called it sophisticatedly, when she watched him dive into his ice-cream with utter joy and Draco’s mind just called it “ _Weasley sucking off an ice-cream cone_ ”. In fact, the way Ron enjoyed his favourite dessert was so enthusiastic and so sloppy, that more of it ended on his chin and nose than in his mouth, which required the extensive use of his tongue and would inevitably make Hermione leave the table in a rush of what everyone was supposed was annoyance and anger, but Draco suspected it might actually be acute arousal. He knew he got hard when he watched him work this particular dessert and he would give an arm and a leg if for once bloody Potter wasn’t staring at him so hungrily, pointing with his finger which places he missed, giggling nervously and blushing and fiddling but unable to look away.

Afterwards Potter would just shake his head and mumble something about eating surely being Ron’s second favourite activity and again, Draco would be willing to pay a considerable amount for information what was his _top_ favourite activity. Something as mundane as sleeping? Quidditch? Or perhaps, given the violent blush those words inevitably produced on Weasley’s skin and a muttered “ _shut-up, Potter_ ”, he meant something far more intimate...

It used to drive the Slytherin up the wall, lying in his bed, shifting sleeplessly and contemplating to no end what Potter and Weasley might be up to in their dorm, his imagination providing images that worked him into being rock hard and desperate for release. Half-crazy on teenage hormones he sometimes considered taking someone, anyone into his bed when he was in a state like this, making sure he didn’t pay them a second glance the day after, but he could never be quite certain just how carried away he would get and well, he didn’t want another person meddling in his private fantasies, which only ever had one, very ginger star. He turned down many eager offers, usually using snorting and “ _oh-please-what-made-you-think-you’d-be-good-enough-for-me_ ” remarks and he didn’t make many friends like that, one could suppose… It didn’t matter, while Ron was around, he couldn’t bare to share himself.

But he got him in the end, didn’t he? He had to wait for him, follow him, seduce him, bring him back on false pretences and none of it mattered, because he was here with him now and that was the only thing important to Draco. He didn’t want to think about the morning, when he will inevitably be gone, he promised him the night and if he had to pull in his Gryffindor honour, he was determined to make him keep his word. This was just…

Draco never felt so intimate and himself with anyone. There was always pretence involved and keeping up appearances and keeping it cool, applying his arrogance to all and everything until he could express nothing but sarcasm, feel nothing but contempt, detaching himself from all the feelings that might imply opening himself up. But Ron crashed him down to pieces, until the real Draco emerged, still somewhat haughty, because he knew no other way, but raw and feeling all this wonderful stuff like happiness and… ohmyfuckinggod, did he really told him he _loved_ him?!

Surely, he was too far gone to hear it, right? Right??? Cause Draco was fairly certain if Ron knew how very desperately obsessed with him he was, he’d be gone before he could say afterglow. He knew it was showing, even Weasley could not have been so blind not to see it, but if he actually _said_ it, that would give Ron power over his life Draco wasn’t quite ready to give away just yet. Nope, he can never say it to his face, he can never give into him so much. He was sure he would lose him, the redhead could not afford complications of _that_ magnitude. If only he could…

Shadow cast over him and Ron returned, carrying plates toppled with anything edible he could find. Draco was grateful that his return cut the somewhat depressive direction of his thoughts and Draco smiled blissfully at him to cover up a sudden chill of sadness. He was with him now, wasn’t he, why complicate things? He will enjoy it for what it was and try to make the best of it, of their time together.

But Ron just took one look at him, put down the plates and rubbed his thumb gently over the crease on top of his nose:

“Sad?” he asked simply and Draco’s eyes went wide. How on Salazaar’s bloody earth did he know?! How good was his legilimency after all? He must have picked up something hanging around Potter all this time, there was no other way to explain it! He fucking just _glanced_ at him and he knew! Even Draco himself had problems deciphering what he was feeling, but Ron was reading him like an open book. The man had serious future as a therapist… or confidante, as he liked to call it and that simplicity brought another smile on Draco’s lips, a genuine one this time.

“It’s nothing,” he said quietly, trying to shrug it off, hoping that Ron won’t probe too deeply. But he was talking to a man, who beat McGonagall at her chess game as a first grader. He never stood a chance. The redhead said nothing at first.

He just sat down next to him and picked up what looked like a piece of toast with some jam, but instead of eating it, he shoved it in his mouth: “Eat! You look like you didn’t have anything in days… Too bad I can’t bring you to the Burrow, my mother would have a feast: she loves them starved!”

It was quite delicious, really, but not as much as the recognition that Ron was actually talking to him like to another human being. So he wasn’t just his fuck-toy, was he? The thought warmed him up and he chewed obediently, watching him stuff his own mouth with an abnormal chunk of cheese and then tried to talk through it, quite disgustingly and quite unsuccessfully. Some things never change. God, he loved him…

After finally defeating the cheese, Ron asked: “More?” and without waiting for his answer, pushed some cheese in his mouth unceremoniously. This time he waited, until Draco was incapacitated eating and then continued, his eyes bright and alert: “You know, Malfoy… I was thinking… oh, lovely, you’ve got that “ _don’t hurt yourself_ ” look in your eyes again, that’s my blondie!... anyway – I was thinking and I can’t for the love of god say what the fuck _is_ this thing between us…”

Draco’s heart sunk: so that’s what this was, a goodbye speech while he was choking on food, well played, chess-master! He stared at him desperately with his best “ _you promised!_ ” rehearsed look, but he knew it won’t do him any good, cause he saw at the bottom of those eyes that Weasley already made his decision.

“I can’t tell what it is, but I can tell it’s bloody good,” said Ron unexpectedly and smiled at him from within his sparkling eyes; a smile that made his heart take a leap and beat faster. “I’m myself when I’m with you… you come to life when you’re with me… I can’t be that brutal nor brutally honest to anyone as I can with you, cause I don’t owe you anything, not a damn thing, Malfoy. Not politeness, no promises, not even love…” Draco’s eyes closed at this unexpected cruelty, but he felt his finger lift his chin and he opened his eyes to stare directly at the ocean blue ponds, just inches away.

“But I do owe you honesty, Malfoy… and honest to god truth is... that I want to do this again."

He saw the grey eyes grow wide in disbelief and turn silver with unfathomable emotion he couldn't afford to acknowledge, so he continued quickly, before this became something he could no longer handle:

"I know how fucked up that is, I’m well aware how many people I risk to hurt, people far more important than you or me… my wife, my Harry, even my children… But I’m willing to do it… for you. And for me, Merlin knows why... but I... seem to need it. So I guess what I’m saying is… want to see this… _us_ … happen again, Draco?”

And Draco’s heart just went into an overdrive. He couldn’t find a reply to that, he just stared into those mesmerizing eyes and then Ron kissed him and got his answer. Draco’s eyes closed and he submerged himself into that kiss like never before. His answer, all his incredible desire and desperate need for warmth and companionship was in that kiss and he gave it all… and got all of it back. Ron kissed like there was no tomorrow. Draco felt his hands slip into that fiery hair to bring him even closer, to melt into him, to show him how much he wanted this.

“I’m… I want to... this... again,” he finally whispered when he was allowed some air, sparks floating in front of his eyes, but he wasn’t sure if it was from the lack of oxygen or the overwhelming intensity of the kiss.

“Is there more where this came from?” he asked hungrily, because he couldn’t get enough of him. He felt his lips smile from their proximity and got his answer in a soft intimate whisper:

“Plenty… for you… it seems… my body seems to know what I want better than I do…” And Draco just knocked him into a lying position to get a better hold of him, to make sure he didn’t lose his grip, cause this was too precious, those moments were his, for him alone. And he heard Ron give a small chuckle and let himself be dominated… it seemed to amuse him.

“Malfoy… blondie… you’re insatiable, it seems…” he breathed between the hot kisses and the blond youth just couldn’t resist.

“Draco,” the blond looked the ginger wildcat in the eye provokingly. “If we’re going to do this, you’re going to have to call me by the name my father gave me... remember…” he teased and heard his chest resonate in laughter.

“So Slytherin of you… Draco… to twist my own words against me…” And then his mouth moved away and left Draco incredulous and panting. How could he do that?! Reduce him to the very pit of his stomach where he felt the unstoppable lust mounting – and then just stop.

“Weasley… Ron…” he almost threatened, trying to launch himself at those sinful lips again, but Ron stopped him with almost no effort.

“But you’re right, you know…” he said smoothly. “No lies, no pretending, none of that glamour and varnish. I’m me, the wife-cheating Gryffindor, in love with another, who loves to fuck you and seems to like talking to you as well – and you’re my Slytherin, you come as you are… sometimes mean, sometimes needy, sometimes nice and vulnerable, sometimes bitchy as only you can be, Malfoy... Draco.”

Stunned the blond looked him in the eye and he saw that the redhead for once was dead-serious: “I need your honesty, Draco. This is not going to work without it. Your complete honesty. I can’t have more lies in my life, not here, not with you. If I find that you’re pretending and lying and well… being your arrogant idiotic self, it will be the last you’ll ever see of me. Your honesty, Draco. Can I have that?”

Draco, suddenly dry throat and all, could only nod and was rewarded with a luxurious kiss that clearly had no end in sight.

“Let’s make this work…” Ron whispered and Draco knew that he was going to try his best to do just that. “If I’m going to keep you around, let me at least feed you, then,” the blond kissed some of the food from the corners of the redhead’s lips. “I promise it will be much better for us both… for one, I can’t stand to look at you eat, either my stomach turns or you make me hard, you ginger wanker… and I know for a fact you like my fingers in your mouth...”

“Mmmm…” was the only answer he got before the Slytherin’s fingers holding a chunk of toast with jam got devoured and thoroughly licked and as hungry as Ron was, they never got all that far with food. Draco knew what he wanted and he knew how to get there – after all, he’s been doing it all in his imagination since he was but a blushing teenager.

Ron made sure it was memorable. He did succeed to get some food into himself in the end, they managed to relocate to the bed at one point and between fits of sleep and making love, they talked of everything and nothing. Ron told him stuff about his kids that made the blond laugh, the Slytherin brought up the stuff he observed about their school-mates on their first day at the Academy and Ron found out he can honestly laugh at some of his edgy and witty remarks. Once all the arrogant pretence was gone, the Slytherin was genuinely funny and smart and Ron discovered he liked his company much better now, when they were on the same side.

Draco fought off sleep as long as he could, as if he realized he couldn’t afford to miss any moment with the ginger, knowing for god-only-knows for how long those stolen moments are going to have to last him, but when the darkness in the sky began to fade, he finally drifted to sleep in his embrace, thoroughly exhausted. Ron watched him nap in the last rays of moonlight making his skin translucent, the beads of sweat from their incredible sex shining like pearls. He looked strangely young and comfortable like this and Ron realized he felt unexpected gentleness towards him. This might be getting more complicated than he was willing to cope with. It was time to go.

He kissed him on the temple and got out a “ _mmmm…waszup_ ” that was so not-Malfoyian that it made him chuckle out loud. And that really woke up the blond. He opened his silver eyes and when he looked at Ron he must have seen _goodbye_ written somewhere in there, because he merely said: “Already?”

And when the redhead nodded, he just gave the tiniest sigh and moved to let him go. Ron got up to go to the bathroom and Draco just slumped back into bed, staring at the ceiling, wondering how the hell is he going to go through his boring existence until their next time. There was going to be a next time, wasn’t there? It’s not that he fucked up anything royally, did he now?

He had to find out somehow, he couldn’t take the suspense. But he couldn’t bloody move to go and ask him, not even to save his life, he was never so destroyed, ever. All the combined Quidditch matches he’s ever played never left him so utterly floored. He supposed part of it could be depression from having to let go, but there was just nothing for it – he knew he had to at one point. This thing between them had no future in the light of day.

Ron emerged from the bathroom, a towel tied around his waist, torso still naked and glistening from water drops and Draco was just staring, unable to ask the question. He started putting his robes on and the only thought Draco could produce was:

“The shirt… You’re not taking it?”

He saw Ron shake his head a little and disappointment washed over him like someone just submerged him in a barrel of icy water. Was this it, then? Did he somehow, unknowingly, fuck up after all? But Ron leaned down and picked up the beautiful garment and went on to sit next to him. He rubbed the side of his face in it, offhandedly, as if he tried to remember its touch, never taking his eyes off Draco and spoke softly.

“I can’t… you know I can’t. This shirt has “ _property of Draco Malfoy_ ” written all over it, I couldn’t wear it once without everyone knowing who I was with. It’s beautiful, though… it’s magic… will you store it for me?” When Draco nodded, speechless, Ron smiled and his long fingers brushed against his cheek. “I’ll be back for that shirt, you know that… it will be my “ _I’m with you_ ” shirt…” And somehow that drew a screw of pain deeper into Draco’s heart than any unkind words could.

“When will I see you next, then?” he said quickly to hide his insecurity and emotional instability from him, his gentleness undoing him so, that he could barely speak without finishing his sentence with “ _please, stay_ ”.  

“I don’t really have a clue,” said Ron honestly. “I didn’t really plan this, I didn’t think of it and I’m afraid if I over-think it, I’ll change my mind, cause this is, honestly, the worst idea I’ve ever had.”

Draco could barely hold back tears at his bluntness and only the years of Malfoyian drill helped him keep a blank face.

“But I can’t imagine I can stay away from you forever,” he smiled suddenly so unexpectedly and bright that it stopped Draco’s heart and he balled his fists to get a grip on himself. “I can’t imagine I’ll be able to stay away from you for very long, even,” the redhead said with a small smile. “I had a really nice time tonight and I... it sounds funny, but I find it hard to leave… I just can’t make any promises right now… just don’t get impatient with me and do something stupid and I’ll figure us a way, okay?”

The last few words were gentle as if he knew how deeply he was cutting him and Draco closed his eyes and could not say anything but a small “ _goodbye, then…_ ” and prayed he would disapparate before his tears spilt.

He felt his fingers brush his cheek one last time, spreading the wetness and he knew that he lost, that Ron knew, but it was only when he felt his lips on his cheek and a small “ _I’ll be back, I promise, blondie…_ ” resonate before the a pop of disapparation, that he allowed himself to sob aloud. “Fuck... you’re killing me, you’re killing me, you’re killing me…” his heart drummed in a fast lethal pace. He was all alone once again, his face bathing in the first rays of sun, his heart once again sunk into darkness.

Ron apparated a block from home, walking the distance with his eyes on the floor, unusually quiet and thoughtful. And when he opened the door of his apartment, he was greeted by a very angry looking set of brown eyes. His wife had returned and she was upset. It was to be fight or flight, then. And Ron already made his decision.


	29. So what it comes down to...

_And sometimes I feel so sorry, I regret this, the hurting of you  
But you make me so unhappy, I'd take my life and leave love with you_

_... You keep this love..._

This love, Pantera

 

“He did _what_!?” Hermione asked incredulously, her head glowing red in the flames of a fireplace.

“He took over my post at Hogwarts!” said Ginny happily, massaging her considerable belly with both hands. Honestly, this child was going to be the death of her before he – oh, it was a _he_ , she was never so sure about anything in her life! – was even born, playing Quidditch in her belly like that! “He offered himself, suspending his post at the Ministry for a year so I could rest at home and McGonagall wouldn’t have to worry about finding a replacement! That’s my Harry, you know, always out to save the world!” she tried to shrug matter-of-factly but she was all but beaming at the memory of how worried he was about her well-being.

“Seriously, Hermione, you should have been here, it was wicked!... but downright scary how my magic went on a rampage in these last few days! It seems to be, I get overly excited with my husband, well, Harry, you know, around and the strangest things happen as soon as he enters the room,” she couldn’t really hide the blush. “I even made myself levitate and pots and pans were shifting randomly and falling all over the place!”

“I’m sure it was shocking,” said Hermione a bit dryly, a look in her eyes indicating that her magnificent brain was working at full speed. “Harry must really be the cause, then...” she said thoughtfully and then added feverishly: “Look, Ginny...”

“Hello, Hermione, how good to see you...” a calm voice interrupted and Harry Potter’s arm crept around his wife’s belly to hug her. Too little, too late, then.

“Oh, Harry, I didn’t realize...” Hermione tried, but she knew her cover was blown. Harry knew. He knew that she knew. He beat her at her own game. Somehow he found out, or guessed or whichever and now he was not letting go. She knew he was a magnificent opponent, dangerous, fast, in love. She was all those things, too and the prize was worth it.

“Congratulations on your new post,” she said simply. “It was a very admirable thing you’ve done there. I’m sure Ron’s happy to have you around,” she threw offhandedly, fully aware how sensitive was Ginny about their close relationship. It won’t harm to bring to her attention what implications Harry’s actions held for others than herself. Harry didn’t let himself get thrown off his rocker, he simply leaned down his head and kissed his wife on the neck, eliciting a smile and without doing anything but lifting his gaze up to stare at her, he purred in his wife’s ear: “ _Ecstatic_ , actually...” And continued to cuddle Ginny, making her giggle.

Hermione understood she lost... for now. It was time to go home, assess the damage, see what can still be done. Harry underestimated her if he thought he was going to give up this fight easy. She had children on her side, Ron’s unyielding loyalty, their friendship and she’ll use her unlimited access to have sex with him to the extreme, if she has to. Ron was always as excitable and up for it as they came. Nothing was _ever_ enough for this man.

Her man. Her _husband_.

There was nothing Hermione wasn’t prepared to take on when it came to keeping Ron. She’d let Molly have the kids for a week, call in sick, tell McGonagall she’d home-school Ron for a week and turn into a slut, his slut, if she had to. All of it. For him.

“Well, do go on,” she said lightly and even managed a laugh. “I merely fire-called to tell you lot that I decided to come home early.” That finally got Harry’s attention and she felt a pang of satisfaction at the thought she could still get him worried. Good. Apparently a few days away couldn’t do lasting damage. But she best hurry, Harry was capable of anything.

“But now that I see Ron’s not here, I better go straight to the Burrow, I can’t wait to see him and the kids, honestly, I could do with some joy and good looks after that bore of a conference, I swear it looked like a convention of Europe’s ugliest faces and most boring characters...” she said with uncharacteristic edge, only now remembering that it was in fact, Harry who got her enrolled and that she was actually _grateful_ at the time! Cheeky bastard!

“Hermione!” squealed Ginny between in mocked horror – as if her own jokes were not crude enough to insult drunken sailors! “Besides...” she managed to squeeze between returning kisses to apparently very eager Harry. “Ron’s not there.”

“What?” said Hermione and Harry in unison, his display of tenderness cut off abruptly, their surprise genuine.

“Well,” said Ginny pouting, more than a bit upset over the sudden abandonment. “I fire-called mom before and she said Ron sent in his owl that he met some old friends and that they were dead set on making up for his lack of social life. You know mom,” she shrugged. “She didn’t bother to ask who he was with as long as she could keep the kids for one more night. She does miss it so, all the rumble! Besides, he promised he’ll be there first thing in the morning to spend the weekend and after giving her the idea of cooking for a million people once more, mom would have forgiven him if he brought Voldemort to dinner!”

Hermione watched Harry intently and was pleased to find out he seemed to be as genuinely oblivious as to Ron’s whereabouts as she was. Perhaps he was at home, or will be soon, and they’ll have the whole place to themselves, entirely on their own. Now, that was a thought! That hasn’t happened in... _Merlin_ , she forgot when it last did! She best hurry up, get freshened up and get her man! Suddenly with a genuine smile on her lips she looked directly at Harry and said sweetly:

“Oh, that’s too bad. Well, I’m sure he’ll be home soon. I better jet, I could seriously use a back-rub and some time alone with my husband,” she said, sounding matter-of-factly, but looking at him pointedly.

His green eyes were ablaze, but he was good at this, too. He slipped into his role of loving husband effortlessly and once more hugged Ginny, holding her in front of him like a shield: “Say hello for me... He owes me a Quidditch match tomorrow, I’ll... play him... at the Burrow.”

“But I didn’t know...” Ginny started, but was promptly silenced by a full-on kiss that made her drop all the pretence and forget about Hermione.

Hermione knew she wouldn't notice and Harry would pretend not to notice when she left. It stung a little, but she always knew she was running on borrowed time. This war for Ron was due and over-due ever since they were on the Horcrux hunt together. She could still remember the long nights in the tent when Ron was the only one sleeping and she would just pretend that she did, while Harry didn’t even bother: he only closed his eyes until her breathing got even, then he would turn around and obsessively stare at Ron sleep, sometimes for hours, almost always ending his night sessions by tossing himself off quickly with muffled cries of his name.

This man, her best friend, was after her husband, there was no doubt about that and she had only her wits to thank that she had considerable advantage. It was a miracle she could keep her secret safe for as long as she did and if it wasn’t for her moment of weakness when George came begging on  behalf of his brother, maybe she would have forgotten all about it, maybe she could pretend that it was just a chance that got her pregnant after all. But Harry always suspected, maybe it was instinct of a person in love, maybe she just wasn’t careful enough – after all, she did feel bad about it, when she saw how hard he took it, their relationship being solidified by marriage and children. It was all she could do to show him she meant business, she meant to keep Ron.

She was never sorry, though. If she could make Harry’s suffering go away, she would have gladly done so, but she was not prepared to go through life without Ron. Harry was clearly stronger than she was. But he was also incredibly resilient and _just not giving up_. That was, after all, the man who died to get to where he wanted to go. And Hermione shivered to think of the lengths he was surely willing to go to get the one person he was obsessively in love with since he was a boy.

It was a _dreadful_ idea to ever put it in Ron’s head to go back to school; she realized that now in the retrospect. Even if Harry didn’t pull his little hat-trick of replacing Ginny – oh, it had his signature _all over_ it! – Ron would eventually finish the N.E.W.T.s, go to work and end up by Harry’s side once again – there was no chance in hell her best friend would ever let an opportunity like that float past him. She was certain Harry would have sooner or later found a way to be next to the man of his dreams.

Her man, her husband, she reminded herself angrily. This game was far from over and if Potter thought he could beat her at it, he had not seen the worst of her yet!

Determined now, more than ever, that Ron was hers to keep, she pulled herself back to her hotel at the conference, got herself freshened up and checked out, leaving a vague note to her colleagues about a sudden family emergency – they all knew she had three kids anyway, that was as likely excuse as any – and apparated back home. She didn’t bother going to the Burrow, knowing she wasn’t expected to arrive for at least another day or two. Besides it was much too late to wake up the kids and there was really nothing she could do with them until the morning except watch them sleep. They were as safe, comfortable and happy as they could be in Molly’s care and Hermione appreciated this very welcome chance to spend some time alone with her beloved husband. She didn’t say it often, but she found it hard to fall asleep without his big warm body next to her, hugging her, sheltering her, making her feel like a million galleons worth.

So she apparated directly into their already too small apartment, happy and jittery with plans and expectation of enjoying her gorgeous husband’s company and having him all to herself for once. She missed that time as well – they only had a few short months to themselves before children came and somehow Harry or someone from Ron’s extensive never-heard-of-privacy family always found a way to cut their private moments together short. Then school came and the babies and her career and though it seemed like Ron never stopped loving her and making the effort to make he feel appreciated, they rarely found time to talk and laugh and tease and bicker like in the old times. They’ve fallen into a sort of a routine, though loving and seemingly satisfactory, yet still a routine that was taking its toll.

Gosh, it seems like they would only go out as a couple once a year, for their anniversary and she remembered that last time she even managed to initiate a fight on that special night! Well, she couldn’t help herself, could she?! It was not her fault she was married to the most dashing man on the planet, who was oblivious enough to his stunning looks to throw his breath-taking smiles around casually to anyone that came within 10 feet of them! She got bloody _jealous_ , she did, when the umpteenth nervously giggling girl approached them and asked for his autograph – _his alone_! – and she, gritted teeth and all, had to remind herself consciously, that he was a decorated war hero and that if Harry was around, he was likely to take away the bulk of the attention. She could barely stop herself from exploding in a jealous fit right there and then, but by the time they got home, she had enough of it and she burst into tears, leaving him utterly confused and lost as to what he’s done again.

But he was just so bloody amazing, wasn’t he?! She had no idea when the lanky awkward youth she fell for managed to transform into such perfection, but somehow it happened right in front of her eyes and it never failed to amaze and annoy her. He was a bloody sex symbol, he was! - and though he kept as low a profile as one could, being a family man, she still had to reject a dozen offers on his behalf every blasted year for interviews and even – god forbid! – posing for those glittering ladies’ magazines! Just the thought of other girls and women stealing a glimpse of his downright edible body, that still made her shiver in his presence, drooling over his incredible smile and dreamy ocean blue eyes - it made her hair stand on end!

As if it wasn’t enough that she had to do with Harry’s eyes literally worshiping him every time he was around! The Boy-who-lived was clearly so smitten with his best-mate that she couldn’t help wondering just how in love and willingly blind must Ginny be, not to notice who was her beloved hero really after. She couldn’t pinpoint exactly, what or when it has happened, but something clearly changed in their relationship during the following past months. It must have had something to do with that fight or disagreement or whatever it was between them, that caused Harry to propose to Ginny, then stay away for weeks, leaving Ron utterly depressed, then again showing up and showering him in attention to the point that it made her nervous.

And then something must have gone broken between them again, from one day to the other the life went out of Harry as if he was mortally stabbed and Ron was nervous and confused and – well, almost looked ashamed. And then Harry surprised everyone by taking Ron with him to pick out the wedding rings only to show up with exactly the same rings they’ve picked for their wedding. It shocked Ginny and made her cry and wonder endlessly about the nature of such thoughtless decision, but as attentive as Harry always was in those days, he was politely adamant and inconsiderate when it came to this. No, he would not take the rings back, no, it was not Ron’s decision, he wanted them, just the way they were and if she didn’t like it, well, too fucking bad, he put it, in those words _exactly_.

Hermione knew that Ginny silently resented Ron for his rash decision to allow Harry to have his way, but it went deeper than that. She was jealous of their friendship, jealous of the closeness they shared, jealous of the easy casual relationship they enjoyed with each other that proved as hard as obsidian over the years. One could just not break those two apart and though Hermione never even attempted to, after all she loved them both, though very differently, Ginny was still not at the stage where she would be willing to accept the fact that her brother was the most important part of Harry Potter’s life. She felt she should be it, being his wife and all. Hermione knew better.

She has watched them grow up together, grow into each other, sometimes fall apart and get pulled straight back together as if the magical bonds between them were unbreakable and she was fully aware of the magnitude of her crime, when she put herself between them as she did. But she did as much as she could - if she tried to make them grow further from each other, she was sure there would soon be no more place in their lives for her. They were meant to be.

She knew something would happen on that blasted stag night, she knew it as she saw Ron get ready for it, planning it carefully as the master strategist he was. He knocked the breath out of her when she saw him absolutely _glowing_ _beauty_ and that special _Ron-scent_ when he answered the doorbell and left with Harry, his arm thrown casually across his shoulders, saying “ _my property_ ” as clear as day. And though everything in her was screaming to stop him from going, she really knew she couldn’t. Not only did she not have a good excuse, she did not have the heart to do so. It was going to be their goodbye, the one they never got when Ron got married, it was going to set the frame for their relationship from that point on. She should have not listened to her heart that day.

She never really found out what happened, she only heard rumours afterwards and even Neville just shook his head and blushed when she approached him about this ( _“Let it go, Hermione, they had their moment, they were both drunk, it’s all water under the bridge now.”_ ). But the first indication that something massive occurred came in the form of a visit she got from George the following morning. He brought Ron home; her husband silent and looking drunk and sober at the same time, kind of destroyed and more beautiful than ever. He mumbled some excuse about getting a few hours worth of rest and he disappeared in their bedroom, but it was not him who looked distraught. George looked positively beside himself, the look in his eyes bewildered and confused, his face tired and tear-streaked which shook her to the core - and he just wouldn’t leave before he said what he came there to say.

He was so blunt and provoking that it somehow brought out her primary instincts to protect herself and her choices and in a moment of carelessness it made her come out to him. She never stopped regretting it, because ever since he wouldn’t stay in the same room with her, but she couldn’t take her words back no more than she could undo what she did to Ron.

But whatever happened that night, it soon became clear that George was the least of her problems. It was Harry that changed dramatically. That night stirred Harry from his haze and the man that emerged on the other side was not the same one that has resigned himself to his destiny of a husband and a father-to-be. Whatever Ron gave him that night, it woke up the power in Harry that she’s only ever seen in the final battle.

The man that looked her in the eye the following day was the Boy-who-lived, the resilient determined focused young man that once went to meet Voldemort and sent him to his death, almost at the cost of his own life. He smiled brilliantly, hugged her and posed with her for The Prophet cover – and yet she couldn’t shake the feeling that it was all a façade and that the man underneath was preparing for a hit. She only had to look at Ron, uncharacteristically avoiding him alone, to know that they have crossed some invisible line and that something was about to change. But when nothing did, not in the first week, not in the second, not in a month, she was lulled in a sense of a false security.

She should have known better. Harry was just waiting for his moment, patiently, as he learnt in all those years waiting to face his mortal enemy, learning his weaknesses, playing down his strengths, striking at precisely the right time.

And Ron was an easy prey, she always knew that. Her husband loved Harry to death and back, there could be no doubt about it to anyone with eyes and ears. His blue eyes lit up around him, he stretched himself to his full height in his presence, his brilliant smile got a provocative sexy edge and even his laughter sounded deeper and raspier when it was directed at him. With all that “Ron” assault – could she really blame Harry for going after him with everything he got? She sometimes had to stop herself from a childish urge to scream “ _He’s mine, mine, mine, mine, I got to him first, he is pledged to me!_ ”. A lot of good that would do.

No, she had to be smart now, play on her strengths, on his loyalty, on the sanctity of their marriage, on their kids ultimately, if she had to.

But all her plans came to a halt when she apparated to an empty apartment that had day’s worth of stale dishes in the sink and still no sign of Ron. It was past midnight when she arrived and this was far from usual. Of course she knew Ron rarely went out drinking all night; he was as responsible a father as they came and with her working obligations at the Ministry, the care of children was mostly bestowed upon him and it would not do to trust the kids to a hung-over dad in the morning. But every once in a while it happened and she knew this might be one of those occasions.

He missed it, of course he did, going out with his care-free buddies, enjoying an illusion of the life without responsibilities for the night – after all, he was still so very young! Except that, until this very evening, he never left the house without Harry and Harry was clearly parked with Ginny for the night, as he usually was on Fridays. A curious matter indeed: who could Ron be with if not Harry? Harry was his safety wall when he felt cast out and not up to the latest trends and gossip; Harry would make sure he ended up at home if he had one too many, Harry would never ever let a chance pass to have him for himself for the evening. And yet – there he was, stuck with Ginny, clearly oblivious to Ron’s whereabouts and Ron was nowhere to be found.

He couldn’t be in danger, could he? The thought gave her a chill and being as resourceful as she was, she stuck her head out of the fire-place at the Burrow just for a moment to take a look at that famous Molly’s clock. She was none the wiser, because Ron’s pointer was at “out, having fun”, but she was at least relaxed now that she knew he was not in “mortal peril”. Oh, he’s probably just met someone like Seamus who wouldn’t shut up to save his life, or Dean who could ramble on endlessly about chicks and trends and Quidditch, or even – the thought gave her a chill – George, who was spending far too much time hanging out in the pubs after Fred’s death.

But she’ll have to do with “not in mortal peril” for now. There will be plenty of time for them to make up for the week apart, how long could he possibly stay out without Harry to keep him entertained? So she decided to use the time she had well and got herself and their cosy little home ready for some private loving time with her husband. Some luxurious bubble bath might do her good – having a bath was actually one of the few luxuries their apartment boasted and it was what really sold the place to them, it’s always handy to have one when you have children. They usually magically expanded it to stuff them all in and watch them wreak havoc with the soapy bubbles, but tonight the normal size will do just fine – two births and three children down and she was still a tiny creature.

She sighed happily when she stretched in the warm soapy water and closed her eyes to rest a little... only to wake up shivering what must have been hours later in a chilly water no one bothered to heat up. She got up quickly, cast a warming charm and put on her bathing-robe.

“Ron!” she called, certain that her husband must be back by this time; she could hear the birds chirping on the trees, a clear indication that the morning was near. But the house was just as empty and abandoned when she first got in, no sign of her husband yet. Worried and puzzled she got dressed up, checked out Molly’s clock again and noticed with relief that the pointer changed to “coming home”.

She looked outside the window to see the morning on the wake and suddenly a wave of unexpected anger flushed over her. She leaves him alone _once_ , once in the bloody three years of their marriage, and he disappears on the world, unaccounted for hours, barely bothering to show up in the morning. And to top it all, he wasn’t even with Harry; this she could understand, but he was bloody well Merlin knows where and he was apparently “ _having fun_ ” and in no hurry to get home. Just what on devil’s bloody earth he thought he was doing!? She finally heard the door lock click and she stared at the tall massive figure stepping in, her anger boiling and mixing with desire. God, she missed him! But she cannot let him get away with it!


	30. Hope, the persevering

“Just what the hell do you think you’re doing Ronald Weasley!?” she hissed at him, arms crossed on her chest, everything in her body indicating how tense and frustrated she was. “I’ve been here all night, waiting for you, worrying, checking your mother’s clock, asking your friends about you – and no one has the faintest idea of where you’ve disappeared to! You could have been kidnapped, killed, god-knows-what, you... impossible thoughtless... bastard!” she finally spat, sorry for the word the second she let it escape, but it did in the end describe very well how she felt about him at the moment.

“Good morning, Hermione, I missed you, too,” he turned towards her calmly and she froze. She expected anything - guilt, embarrassment, apologetic behaviour, even defensive anger mixed with anxiety – he knew full well how much damage she could do when she was upset! – but not this, not this cold determined attitude, spiced with sarcasm and entirely unapologetic.

“So... where have you been?” she tried to breathe slowly and deeply to calm down, staring at him intently so she could catch him lying should he attempt it. She could always tell when he was twisting the truth – not that it happened often, mind you, Ron was about as straight-forward as they came – but when he merely shrugged and turned around to hang his robes on the wall-hook, with an uncommitted “ _you know, just hanging out with a friend_ ”, she couldn’t read him and her anger exploded.

“Oh, I would be very interested to find out just what kind of _a friend_ that is, who keeps you entertained the whole night – “ _out, having fun_ ”, your mother’s clock said! You are, in case you forgot, still my husband and the fact that I was out of the country for a few days doesn’t exactly relieve you of your pledge to be _honest_ to me, does it now!?”

She realized she was screaming, but right now, she didn’t care. She wanted him to understand how angry and insecure and afraid to lose him she was. “So, I’m asking your once again, Ron Weasley, who were you with and why did it take you the whole night to get home?!”

Ron turned towards her, blue eyes so cold it frightened her and approached her, everything in his posture so scary, she actually backed up towards the wall – she knew he would never hit her, but it was pure instinct - all about this man spoke danger.

“I was with _a friend_ ,” he said pointedly. “Someone that was in a bad place and needed my company for the night. The rest is none of your business,” he added brutally and saw her go pale. He saw anger flashing in her eyes and he matched it: “Besides – you are the one to preach honesty! _Seriously_?! You, of all people!?”

This time she felt her colour drain from her cheeks and she could see a pang of regret in his eyes, but a second later it was replaced by dark anger and sheer determination: apparently he decided this game has gone too far to quit now and let her win this round.

“How dare you... what do you mean... I was always honest to you... faithful...” she tried, but it was clear that she was losing the ground under her feet.

“Faithful, yes, no doubt about that, but _honest_... this whole relationship, everything we’ve built here is  based on _a lie_... _I heard you_ , Hermione! I heard you and George that night!” he finally shouted his anger and frustration and she collapsed by the wall.

“It’s not what you think... it wasn’t like that...” she attempted to save what little there was, but right now Ron didn’t care what she had to say. She had cheated him out of his chance to choose and she deserved everything that was coming to her.

“Me and Harry... we got together while you were gone,” he said bluntly almost with glee and she just closed her eyes and prayed that this was all just a horrible nightmare, her loving gentle husband could never be so set on to hurt her. “Just like we should have, long time ago, always... if it wasn’t for you and your _bloody selfish lies_!” he howled, angry, hurt and humiliated at how ruthlessly he had been played. “Were you ever going to tell me?!”

“What good would it do now?” she asked quietly, utterly lost and empty beyond belief as the floor under her feet cracked and she felt herself sink in the pit of despair.

“How could you, Hermione?!” he yelled at her, unable to understand that she showed no remorse for her betrayal. “You _knew_... you knew before I did how much I loved him, how much he wanted me and you went on regardless, thinking of no one but _yourself_!”

“Well, what was I supposed to do, Ron?!” she finally yelled back from the bottom of her despair. “What _chance_ did I ever stand against him? What would you have done in my place, desperately in love and wanting this one person you were about to lose?! I knew you’d never choose me; this was my only chance to ever be with you, to steal myself a few years of happiness and hope maybe it all works out for the best! You can’t tell me you’d ever choose me over him if you were given half a chance?!”

“We’ll never know now, will we?” said Ron calmly, as if her anger opened up a door inside him to make him understand how desperate she was to do what she did. “It’s all water under the bridge now... we are where we are and we can’t change a damn thing. You should have been honest, though. You should have told me you wanted kids with me and not trick me into believing that the pregnancy just happened... I might have gone with it, you know... I was to self-conscious to come on to Harry anyway… and I wasn’t at all too anxious to go back to school and out into the great big scary new world where I just lost a brother and everything was ruined... I always wanted a family and you used that. You knew that I might say “ _no_ ” to you and choose him, but that I would never turn my back on my own family, I am that much of my mother’s son.

You knew my weakness and you used it to lose me the one person I was made to be with. But for you it was never about the kids, you never wanted them like I did, it was about keeping me, about getting to me first. Don’t you understand what you did?!” he asked coldly and stared at her tear streaked face.

“You reduced me to the likes of a _house-elf_ ,” he offered the analogy that knew was going to hurt her the most. “They would be happy to oblige when asked nicely as well, but what makes them slaves, what makes them what they are is the fact that the wizards order them around with complete ignorance of their free will. You took _that_ away from me, Hermione, my sweet house-elf champion, you took my free will, you cheated my out of the chance to decide for myself, you made me less than Dobby, where was your precious “ _honesty_ ” then, woman!?” he hissed angrily and she began to cry in earnest.

“Oh, god, Ron, please don’t hate me... it’s just... I wanted you so much... you were the only one I ever wanted and I saw him looking at you with all that hunger and then the war ended and I knew I was going to lose you forever... and I just couldn’t bare it... you have no idea... I can’t imagine my life without you, you make me so incredibly happy and complete, please don’t turn away from me, not like that!”

He turned away from her anyway, something inside him still unable to face her tears and spoke with seeming calm: “No matter... I waited for you for a month to come forward to me, to tell me what you did and still I would have forgiven you. I know you gave me the best part of you, you gave me my beautiful loving babies and I cannot imagine living in a world without them. But you never came through, you never came clear. So I knew I had to do something rectify this. And I did, first chance I got. He came to me, so vulnerable and wanting that I couldn’t help giving him what should have been his, since forever. I told him I loved him more than my own life... but I also let him know that I cannot just leave my kids to be with him.”

Her eyes popped wide open at this unexpected confession and she could hardly believe his words: “You’re not leaving me, then?” she whispered.

“Of course not, my kids need me,” he replied calmly, only the paleness on his face indicating what it took to have reached such a self-denying decision. “And his child is going to need him and he is not going to want to let go, once he holds the baby in his hands. He doesn’t know it yet, but I know him that much. I could not love him if he was any different. So, if you’re still anxious to keep this… our marriage… going – as far as I go, it is safe until our youngest head off to Hogwarts… but I can’t make any promises from then on,” he shrugged.

Hermione, perhaps for the first time in her life, didn’t know what to do, how to go on. Immense relief that her marriage was saved, at least for now, mixed with guilt and terrible disappointment that he’s not staying for her, not for her, for the children alone. She felt it hurt too much to breathe and she could only manage small shallow breaths to bridge through her pain. Suddenly she felt him kneel next to her and he held her in a warm embrace, just like she hoped she would, just like she felt he never would again.

“I still love you, you know,” he said softly. “Just not the way I love him. I don’t belong with you like I belong with him, that’s all that it comes down to,” he told her gently. “But you’ll always be the mother of my children, you’ll always have a place in my heart, Mione.” His unexpected kindness brought out another rush of tears, just when she thought she had no more to shed.

“Shhhhh...” he comforted her gently, kissing the top of her head. “I never could stand seeing you cry. And I owe you so much. But you cut me deep, Mione, you must understand that. You can’t blame this Dobby for finding himself…” – his eyes sparked at a sudden thought – “well, _a shirt_ , I suppose,” he concluded on a strange note and she couldn’t help giving a sad smile through her tears. “I can’t spend an eternity living a lie, but if you still want this, us, to go on, I will give you your few years of happiness you bargained for. It’s at least I can do for everything you’ve ever done for me... So: do you want us to make this work? I’m up for it, for the sake of the little ones if nothing else....” he whispered and drove a knife of her guilt deeper and deeper into her heart.

“Oh, Ron, what am I going to do?!” she cried helplessly.

“The decision is yours, you know that," he shrugged, seemingly unaffected. "You can walk out on me this minute and start a new life, make a fresh start. They'll all blame it on me anyway, it's not like you cheated. Or alternatively... you could hang on in there and hold on to me,” he said quietly and kissed her cheek. She went silent for a while, hanging onto him for dear life and wondering if this will be enough. It will have to do for now, she decided in the end. It's not like she really had any other option, not the way her heart rotated around him. She will have to share him with Harry from now on, he was clear about that, but what else was new? It’s not like she ever really owned him, held his full and undivided attention, found herself the only object of his love. There was always him, Harry, sometimes at the background, sometimes in front of her, but never absent, never gone. And she could live with that, she decided. As long as she was with Ron, there was always hope... perhaps hope for more than his loyalty. 

“So... how do we do that?” she finally asked tiredly. “Are you going to be spending every other day with him and coming home as you please?" she asked somewhat sardonically. "And what about Ginny?”

“We do this as we go along,” Ron said firmly. “And with as little people getting hurt as possible. I don’t think Harry will be able to be honest with Ginny. She’s not you, she won’t be willing to share. She doesn’t understand, she never did. And I don’t want to hurt her, she’s my baby sister after all. I did what I did to give her a chance at happiness, but as it turned out, her happiness is not in my hands. And I never wanted to hurt you either, I hope you know that,” he looked into her eyes and she gave a tiniest of nods, sealing their agreement.

“Good, we’re all settled, then,” Ron got up and headed for the bedroom. “I’m knackered. I’ll try to grab a couple of hours of sleep before we head over to the Burrow. You are coming with me, aren’t you?” he looked at his wife with a raised eyebrow as if this was going to be a test of her cooperation. He nodded, too tired to get up and tried to stifle a pang of pain because he didn’t ask her to join him in the bedroom. Her old Ron would never pass a chance at that, he must really be tired, then.

“Ron!” she suddenly lifted her head and looked at him sharply. “Who were you with last night? I know it wasn’t Harry, I was there, Ginny was not about to let him go for the night.”

And her beautiful husband smiled, a brilliant sexy smiled that knocked the breath out of her and said simply: “A friend, I told you. It’s not my secret to disclose, my little wife, so you will ask no more. Someone special,” he added with a sudden feral spark in his ocean blue eyes which she rarely got to see and made him look shockingly like his werewolf-bitten brother Bill.

Hunger and desire. Whoever it was, she was suddenly sure, Harry had competition.


	31. A little crazy and out of control

“ _More_!” demanded Harry hungrily between two kisses. “More, Ron, please… God, I missed you….”

 “For fuck’s sake… Harry… control yourself… oh, my fucking god, I missed you, too…. But we can’t just….”

“Sure we can… why not…” asked Harry suddenly on top of him, carefully aligning their erections together and rocking gently, enough for the friction to make them both moan.

“Harry… you promised…” Ron whispered, well-aware that he won’t be able to hold on to his determination to avoid this for too long… not under the circumstances.

“I know…. I know I did…” said the raven-haired youth feverishly, not for a moment stopping his ministrations. “But I can’t help it, Ron… I gotta have you… it’s driving me crazy, watching you smile and touch people and… you just looked at the table and I knew I was going to have to sit next to you and I won’t be able to touch you… and you’d be hard… and… oh, God… Ron, please…”

The redhead clearly decided that the best way to end this, was to actually end it and he slipped his large hand between them and freed Harry’s engorged member from the confines of his jeans and began to rub expertly.

“Ohmyfuckinggod, yes… Ron, yes… like that… oh, Merlin, yes, just like that… I want to feel you… take yourself in that gorgeous big hand of yours…. Yesssss…. Ohmygodloveyess…..”

As soon as silken skin of Ron’s shaft slid next to his hard-on, Harry lost it. Ron was tossing them both off with urgency, skill and determination that fueled his need beyond what he thought possible and he no longer cared if they got caught or not: this was his man, these were their moment, he’ll hex anyone that tries to take this away or cut it short. It was his right to be this happy, to feel himself coming right into that beautiful strong palm he dreamt about since he knew that sex existed and Ron was doing everything in his power to make his imagination look like it came short of reality.

Harry, eyes closed, was licking and biting his beautiful strong neck, sucking on his earlobe, drawing around the shell of his ear, squeezing and pinching his nubs, worshiping his beautiful face – everything and anything, just to hear him curse and moan and yelp helplessly, coming undone for him, because there was no greater aphrodisiac for Harry than making Ron come.

“Shit… fuck, Harry… Godric, yes… harder… there, right there… ohmyfuckinggodyes….” His hissing almost drove Harry over the edge and he knew he was merely moments from coming when he heard him babble incoherently in a needy throaty voice: “Need to come… oh, my fucking god, you have no idea…”

Then he felt his head being pulled back by his hair and he opened his green eyes and looked straight at the stormy blue eyes he adored: “That’s right… look at me, Potter… look at me, Harry… I… love…you, Potter… please… god… Harry, Iloveyou, come for me, love...” the redhead begged helplessly and then his body arched and Harry exploded at the same time, when his thick purple shaft began vomiting strand after strand after strand of pearly liquid. “Shit, Harry… shit… love… look, what you made me do…”

Their comes were mixing into one thick pearly river and Harry collapsed on top of his lover, panting and blabbing “ _Ohmyfuckinggodron, oh-my-fuck…_ ” feeling like he just ran a marathon to reach Heaven first and got there on time.

His release was incredible, he felt like he didn’t have sex in ages and yet they just made out with Ginny in the morning. As always, he was thinking of him, when he pounded into her, making her scream, but that was nowhere near the experience he just had; a mere tossing-off and Ron made him feel like his guts were being wrenched out of his prick. He almost scared him and he adored him beyond words. He just couldn’t keep away, he couldn’t. He knew he promised, but once he saw him, stretching on the lawn besides the little pond they played in every summer, since he was allowed to visit, his promises went to smoke and he knew he won’t make it back to the Burrow before he gets a taste of him.

They arrived in the morning, all of them, Harry and Ginny first, followed by an uncharacteristically quiet Hermione, whose only - slightly vague - explanation was that Ron was still sleeping, because he had a long night and Harry’s heart almost exploded in a fit of jealousy and resentment, his imagination presenting the worst of the obscene scenarios of what his temperamental lover and his eager wife got up to with the apartment all to themselves.

It was only lucky, that enthusiastic Hugo practically kidnapped him as soon as he saw him, giving him little time to ponder upon those bitter images his jealousy provided. And when the object of his fantasies finally stepped out of the fireplace an hour or so later, still sleepy-looking, yawning and stretching like a big ginger cat, Harry was ready to jump him there and then.

He was so beautiful, didn’t he know it? How could he not know it? There should be a law against looking so damn gorgeous when you’re only half awake, Harry thought to himself miserably, unaware of how little room for misinterpretation the hunger in his look provided. Clad only in faded Muggle jeans and a stretched and much too short maroon sweater, the insensitive ginger oaf scratched his sleep-ruffled silky hair and smiled at him most brilliantly “ _Hi, Harry_ ”, giving him the briefest and most innocent of hugs and the biggest hard-on his robes could hide.

He wandered away casually, loudly wondering what’s for breakfast and submitting himself to his mother’s scolding about a late hour to get up and his inappropriate attire, leaving Harry hopelessly aroused and yearning for his touch. Breakfast was pure torture for Harry, who stupidly made sure he sat next to the object of his affection, to at least inhale his smell – which almost proved out to be his demise. Every time they touched accidentally, every time he caught Ron glancing at him with his naughty little-boy smile, he remembered his vivid description of how he wanted to fuck him right there and then and by the time the breakfast was over, there was no way Harry could get up with the rest of them.

So he just sat there, hopelessly nursing his erection, stuffing himself with food and making Molly ecstatic by chewing and complimenting her food until he thought it was finally safe to get up and disappear to the bathroom to take some of the tension off. For the next couple of hours he desperately tried to avoid him and Ron was on his best behaviour, as if he was a bit ashamed to knowingly provoke him like that. He stayed away, played with kids, rubbed his wife’s back and whispered something in her ear that finally produced one of those infatuated smiles only he knew how to get out of her. He even helped Molly in the kitchen, until she threw him out for endangering her efforts to make a perfect meal and sent him off to de-gnome the garden if he really wanted to be useful – and this was where Harry finally cornered him alone.

“I need you,” he told him breathless, practically drooling over his naked torso, because that impossible ginger tease removed his sweater to work in a later summer sun and Harry just couldn’t stand to look at those long lean muscles stretching, pale skin sparkling in the sun with small pearls of sweat gathering in the trail of ginger hair disappearing into those accursed faded jeans.

“I can’t… we can’t…” the redhead told him gently, without even looking at him and continued to bend over, grab the little squirming creatures by the hair by half a dozen, stretching and spinning, launching them as far as he could, presenting a breath-stopping symphony of movements of his profanely gorgeous body. “You promised,” he said matter-of-factly as if he was entirely unaware what a sight for sore eyes he was.

“I know… goddammit, _I know_ ,” hissed Harry desperately and then pleaded. “Ron, look at me…” The miserable tone of his voice was clearly explicit enough for Ron to see the emergency of the situation and he finally paid him a look. “I need you… Ron, please… I can’t take much more… please find a way.” Harry begged shamelessly and he didn’t care. If that’s what is going to bring him his man, begging it was. He was that desperate.

Ron finally launched the last couple of gnomes over the fence and said without looking at him again:

“I’m done here. I’m sweaty like a motherfucker, I’m gonna take a dip in a pond by the forest… don’t follow me,” he said pointedly and then stopped by his side for the briefest of moment, allowing him to breathe in his masculine sweaty scent, making him almost dizzy with desire. “At least not just yet,” he added quietly, the spark in his eyes an unmistakable invitation. Harry’s heart almost leaped out of his chest and his mouth went dry as he watched him walk away, his long body bathing in the sun-rays to the point of glowing.

“Harry!” Ginny called him from the house. “Mom needs us to help set up the table.”

“Later,” said Harry with blunt abandon without moving his eyes from the tall slim figure, moving leisurely through the tall grass. God himself couldn’t stop him from following that man now. His red hair was already disappearing from the view and Harry heard his heart drum loudly in his chest as if he was afraid he was going to miss his chance.

“There’s something I need to do first,” he yelled over the shoulder. “I’ll be back in a second, it’s just… it’s urgent,” he stopped bothering with explanation, cause nothing mattered anymore, when he was the hunter and his prey was getting away.

He ignored her complaints, fully aware that she was in no state to follow him with her belly making her movements difficult and awkward - and moved in to get his man. He found him by the pond, just like where he said he was going to be and he almost  worked himself up to a cardiac watching him stretch leisurely in the grass, slowly taking off his clothes.

“Is this show for me?” he finally asked breathless when he could not take anymore.

Ron looked up at him, his eyes as blue as the skies above him and smiled in a slow, sexy way only he knew how.

“If you want…” he said sweetly, almost innocently and Harry couldn’t stop himself from launching at him.

“We don’t have much time…” Ron told him between feverish hungry kisses and Harry could barely squeeze in “I know… god, don’t I know it…” because his mouth was otherwise occupied. “But I can’t… I missed you so… you have no idea….”

At this point Ron’s kisses turned luxurious, deep and needy and Harry lost all self-control.

“More!” he demanded hungrily between two kisses. “More, Ron, please… God, I missed you….” And the rest was a-given. They couldn’t stay away from each other, the love between them was just too strong.

As it was all done and they lied down in the green meadow, panting, sweaty and naked, Ron manoeuvred his arm under Harry’s head and brought him closer to himself.

“I told her…” he whispered in his ear and Harry’s world came to a halt.


	32. What is worth the wait

Unable to fully comprehend the implications of those words he sat up straight and stared at him as if he’s just gone bonkers.

“You told who… what?” he asked, his heart suddenly beating in his throat and feeling light headed.

“Hermione,” said Ron matter-of-factly and put a small blade of grass to chew on it. “I told her about us,” he added unnecessarily because suddenly Harry understood and he launched himself at his best mate, kissing him madly and clinging onto him for dear life.

“Easy, silly… “ Ron chuckled softy under an unexpected attack. “I can’t go and live with you just yet,” he said with regret, knowing that he’s going to disappoint the raven-haired youth, but he knew no other way than to be blunt.

Indeed, the frontal attack stopped immediately:

“But then… why?” said Harry in a lost voice, his disappointment almost too great for words.

“Well, I heard her talking to George, after he brought me home from your stag night… George… silly…” his voice got gentle when he thought about what his brother tried to do for him.

“He asked her if she would give me up… for you… and you know Georgie, when he wants something, he’s just like mom… he wouldn’t let go until she screamed at him that she’ll never let me go that if I wanted to go, I have to leave, she’s never ever letting me go of her own will. They thought, or at least she thought, I was sleeping, but you’d have to be dead to sleep over that rant! Then she told him, how she’s made sure she got pregnant as soon as she could, using even Muggle medicine and Godric only knows what else – I suspect not much was needed with my Weasley gift for procreation,” he shrugged, sounding angry and agitated.

“Anyway, she told him she’s gone through all that trouble and lied to me for all these years just to get me, to keep me, she wasn’t about to let go, because I had a “ _fling_ ” – that’s exactly what she called it, and believe me, that one really got me going!” said Ron, the anger in his eyes still flashing hot at the memory.

“A _fling_ , just a fling… only a decade-long fling indeed, only the one bloody thing I ever wanted and she goes and takes it from me, no regrets, nothing!” he clenched his teeth at the memory and Harry felt strangely comforted to see how deeply he cared indeed.

“And still, I would have forgiven her, if she came forward, told me what she’d done, confess and be sorry – I can’t honestly be angry at her for giving me my little sunshines,” he smiled softly and Harry fell in love with this generous man all over again.

“But I can no longer love her like I did before, I cannot not trust her and I certainly don’t feel as if I owe her anything anymore… not even courtesy of pretending that everything is all right between us,” he said adamantly.

“And that’s why I told her last night,” he finished and looked Harry deep in his moist brilliant orbs.

“But none of what goes on between Hermione and me relieves me of duty to my children, Harry,” he said gently, but with determination. “We agreed to keep up the appearances and I promised to leave our marriage intact at least as long as the last of our kids goes to Hogwarts,” he explained as if that kind of a deal was most normal among spouses.

“This way I can make sure my children are taken care of and she gets what she always wanted, a few more years with me,” he finished and finally sought out Harry’s mouth. He needed his assurance that he’s done well and Harry felt he had no right to withhold it.

He could not give Harry what he wanted, not just yet, but Harry had to admit that given the circumstances, he could have hardly done much better. True, they were going to have to wait to be with each other for a few more years, but at least he won’t have to play tug of war with Hermione anymore and he was relieved. Not only she would have made a magnificent opponent, he also truly cared for her and he would have hated the idea that he was hurting her. Well, he was probably hurting her regardless, they both were, but at least this way she understood that they were both willing to pay her dues by maintaining the pretence of normality. She needed it far more than any of them did and kids needed it the most. Yes, Ron’s done exceptionally well in Harry's opinion.

“So… eight more years…” he whispered between two kisses and was surprised when Ron shook his head gently, as if there was more to say and he had no heart to say it:

“Eleven, at least…” he said with regret clearly distinguishable in his voice. “Eleven or more, if you have more children, Harry,” he pointed out and Harry shivered, suddenly understanding what he meant by “the last of our kids”.

“You’re a cruel, cruel man, Ronald Weasley…” said Harry bitterly and Ron just looked at him with so much pain and sadness in his eyes that he lost all the words he wanted to hurt him with.

“Oh, but I know you, Harry…” Ron said quietly. “I know you better than you know yourself… And I know you will want more,” he continued, just a hint of sadness in his voice. “I can tell before you can, you have no idea how incredible it feels to be a dad and how much you’re going to love it… I know it sounds crazy now and unnecessarily cruel, but it’s the only way… you will understand once you become a dad.”

“You keep on saying that!” Harry said passionately, not at all so sure about his own dedication and joy to become a father. “But I can’t really understand how will that change anything? I’ll still love you like crazy, I’ll still wake up every blasted morning wishing it was by your side, I’ll still ache for you in the middle of the night… how will the baby change any of that?! I can’t see it, I honestly can’t! It’s not that I don’t want the baby, I do, I honestly do, but I can’t see it how could it make me more patient, how could it make it easier waiting to finally be by your side, you know… not hiding, but for everyone to see!”

But Ron just smiled, a bit sadly, but also with determination that was incomprehensible to Harry’s passionate and impatient heart.

“The baby will not change that, but it will make the wait worth you a while. Once they put that baby in your hands, Harry, you’ll understand,” he repeated, no doubt in his voice. “You won’t believe how strong the ties are! Look, even scum like Lucius Malfoy can’t help but to love his child – need I say more? And once it’s here, you’ll be able to make up for everything you ever wanted your dad to be and you get to play with him and be all silly and childish again without anyone rolling their eyes up…” he smiled at Harry brilliantly and the raven-haired youth just stared at him, knowing that he’ll be working his butt off to be a dad Ron wanted him to be, just to earn trust like that.

But Ron looked at him, suddenly serious and took his hands into his large palms: “You know, Harry, when the baby is born, a father is born as well and your life will never be quite the same, quite your own again… you’ll share it with future from then on and everything you do, everything you are from that moment on may get passed down generations.”

And the ginger smiled at his best mate once again, this time brightly and his long fingers brushed along Harry’s cheek.

“Imagine that: the little one – mind you, Ginny is certain it’s going to be a boy, she says there’s no other way for a Weasley-Potter first born! -  a little mixture of you and a bit of what makes me up, sitting in your lap, sharing your warmth, enjoying safety, learning love and trust from you, always looking up to you because there is no one greater than a dad. What could be more inspiring? Can you honestly tell me, you could look at what might be a little redheaded pumpkin like Hugo, with your mother’s brilliant green eyes and tell him, that daddy is leaving him to be with uncle Ron? Or a small copy of yourself with Ginny’s eyes - or even my eyes, it’s possible – would you be able to look into my eyes and say those words, Harry?”

Harry shivered at the idea and finally understood what his mate worked so hard to say.

“I don’t think I could love you if I thought you could, Harry,” he looked into his eyes firmly and the raven-haired youth realized how much he was putting on the stake for him.

“You have no idea, how much protectiveness you feel, just how much you belong to that little helpless creature… They are so tiny and vulnerable, your love the only fence guarding them, keeping them secure from the world that’s out there and that just isn’t fair. You can’t spare them from eventually having their own taste of life, sometimes bitter, sometimes sweet, but you can give them a sense that they can always  count on you, that you’re their safe harbour, a place to come back to when their ships sink – and you can’t do that, if you abandon them. They have to know you’re always going to be there for them and they won’t if you’re not!” he looked deeply into the rich-green eyes, hopeful that he managed to get through to him, how important this was.

“Oh, Ron…” Harry breathed, strangely moved by this display of loyalty and affection for his kids and suddenly more eager than ever to be a dad, to experience all these wonderful feelings, to have something else to share with his beautiful mate.

“You know I could never abandon anyone, let alone someone that looks like Hugo – that young man has me wrapped around his little finger! I’ll do my best to be the dad you want me to be and with you as my role-model, honestly, how far _could_ I possibly stray from perfection?” he smiled and suddenly Ron was kissing him full-on, showing his gratitude, his love and his devotion in the only way he knew how.

“I know you couldn’t… and that’s why you get to keep my love, that’s why I’m staying with you, my wonderful loving Harry… as long as you'll have me,” he whispered and when Harry added " _always, then_ " - time once again disappeared on them.


	33. Anything but love

_“So go on, infect me, go on and scare me to death_   
_Dare me to leave you, tell me I'd never forget_   
_You could give me anything but love_   
_Anything but love...”_

Anything but love, Apocalyptica

 

“Oh, where is Ron off to again?!” Molly complained, her voice irritated. “First he won’t get from under my feet, then he disappears on us right before lunch is ready and – I know my boy! – drags dear Harry with him, starving the poor boy as if he hasn’t been through enough hunger in his life! Sweet Merlin, once I get my hands on that boy’s behind, it will be as red as his hair and I don’t care if he’s two heads taller than I am, I don’t need to reach his ears!”

Ginny and Hermione just looked at each other silently, but none of them smiled as they normally would at Molly’s rant. There was something in the air around those two today and only Molly, busy with cooking and kids could have missed it. Hermione knew what was going on, but she tried to keep it to herself, pretending to be cheerful and keeping up appearances at all costs lest she upset Ginny. But there was really no way around upsetting Ginny this time. With the rage of hormones full on, she looked every bit ready to cry, though it was not yet clear if in grief or in rage.

“Oh, I supposed it doesn’t matter! We’re going to eat now and Ron can count his stars if there’s anything left at the end! That blasted boy is going to be the end of me! Sweet Godric and Rowena, once I’ve had the twins I thought I’ve seen the worst of it, but he leaves them all behind! All the sleepless nights on his account, forever worrying and he can’t even show up to lunch on time!”

Hermione got up to help her with the table, but Molly waved her away.

“Sit down for Merlin’s sake, sit, my dear girl, you look exhausted! Honestly, what are they thinking, tying you up at those endless seminars like that! And if I managed my Bill’s wedding, I think I can manage a simple lunch for a handful of people!” she said good-naturedly and practically threatened Ginny: “And don’t you even dare to get up, Ginny dearest! You need all the rest you can get, you wouldn’t like to upset the baby over some pots and pans now, would you now? I’ll get the kids, you two just sit tight and it will all be done in a blink.”

“Where are they, Hermione?” hissed Ginny as soon as her mother was out of earshot. “Why do they have to disappear on us like that all the time!? For fuck’s sake, there is just no leaving Harry alone with Ron these days, is there!?”

Her voice pitched dangerously near hysterical screaming and Hermione quickly silenced her with a nervous “ _shhhh_ ”, when Molly stuck her head out of the kitchen and asked: “What was that, dear? Were you talking to me?”

“No mom,” said Ginny tiredly, her voice defeated. “I was just discussing the latest gossip here with Hermione and got a little carried away… but she promised to tell me all about it later, the table with children is no place for it,” she looked at the other girl sharply and Hermione couldn’t do anything but nod in agreement.

As soon as her mother was out of the door, Ginny grabbed her friend’s hand and squeezed mercilessly: “I meant it, Hermione. Something happened and I want to hear all about it. Why is Ron so cheerful all of the sudden, when he was depressed for months? And why does Harry follow him around like a puppy, when it was always the other way around? I know you noticed, too, nothing much escapes you, and I know you know something about that, so don’t try to get out of it, I want some answers!” she said in a low but nevertheless dangerous voice so alike to the one of her fearless mother.

And Hermione could only nod with a lump in her throat and whispered in compliance: “We’ll talk later, I promise… not now… this really isn’t the place… later, when kids take their afternoon nap…” she answered a numb question in Ginny’s stormy eyes and pleaded with her.

“Do take it easy, dear. I’ll tell you everything I know. And Harry will be back shortly, I know he will. And I know Ron will want some time alone with the kids after all this time, I’ll drag him home early, I promise, so you and Harry can have another quiet evening to yourselves, Merlin knows there won’t be many of those once the baby arrives,” she sighed somewhat resigned when Freddie, dirty to the point of resembling a stray dog, launched himself at her, desperately trying to get her attention.

Ginny seemed a peace for the time being and lunch turned out to be somewhat pleasant affair with Freddie stealing food from Hugo’s plate, Rose asking her mom a thousand and one question about her trip and Hugo finally falling asleep in his plate in the middle of the affair.

“Poor darlings, look how destroyed they all are,” whispered Molly, all butter around her grandchildren, practically sleeping behind the table. “Small wonder, they’ve been having such a lovely time here in the country! You really ought to bring them along more often, you know… just leave them here, make them get some fresh air, have some time alone with my son…”

“Oh, about fresh air,” Hermione cut her off before the conversation sailed into dangerous water. “Ginny and I could really use some, so let’s get my little kittens all settled for their nap and we’ll go about to stretch our legs for a bit, if you don’t mind…”

“But of course, sweetie, do run along, I’ve got this!” Molly urged her and practically pushed them both out of the door. “But I trust you won’t take my daughter too far, Hermione, dear, those walks can be so dreadfully tiring in the last weeks! And do not hesitate to call for help should something go wrong! Now, run along, poor darlings… but slowly!” she finally closed the door on them and Hermione sighed a sigh or relief.

“Yeah, that’s mom for you,” said Ginny matter-of-factly. “She can be somewhat overwhelming at times, but she means well. So where are we…?” she never got to finish her sentence as Hermione held her tightly around the shoulders and before she knew it, they’ve apparated to Hermione’s apartment in town.

“What… where… why?” it took Ginny a few moments to come to her senses and she looked at the other girl in shock.

“I know, I’m sorry,” said Hermione simply. “I know it’s not very safe to apparate in your state, but I couldn’t risk talking to you anywhere out there, not with them god knows where on the property. And if we want to do this right, we are going to need some privacy.”

Ginny looked at her sombre expression and simply collapsed on the nearest chair and said:

“Talk to me… _please_. I know no one would talk to me, because they all think I’m in that super hyper delicate state and it’s just driving me crazy thinking that things are going on and going wrong behind my back and everyone is just trying to shield me from the truth. But I know you’ll be honest to me, I trust you, Hermione,” she looked into her friend’s astute eyes and she knew the older girl heard her. Hermione was not the one to pull on “ _I’m a girl, I’m so sensitive_ ” card – she was as strong as the women came and Ginny knew she was going to get served the truth.

So she took a deep breath and asked:

“Why aren’t we enough, Hermione? Why aren’t we enough for those two? I mean, just look at us: you’re the brightest witch of your generation, you had a Quidditch superstar Victor Krum at your feet and still chose my senseless oaf of a brother instead and I’m… well, I’m not going to sell myself short, I know I could have picked almost anyone, I was never short of boyfriends, but I never wanted anyone else than Harry… and I’m not so sure, he feels the same about me… I never really was…”

Her eyes were suddenly damp with tears, God, was she ever turning into a sap with these ever-present hormones ravaging her! She never meant to cry, she never meant to show her weakness, she merely wanted answers and yet her altered body left her with so much excess baggage in the way of emotions that she didn’t know how to stop the river of frustration suddenly pouring out of her eyes. A moment later she felt Hermione hug her and she patted her on the back in a comforting way.

“Shhh, my poor Ginny… I’m so sorry you have to struggle with feelings like that, especially when all you should be feeling right now is joy and sweet expectation, but I have no remedy for that. You ask me why aren’t we enough… it’s not that we’re not enough, we’re simply too much,” she told her with pity in her voice, knowing that she will understand those words exactly as they were meant. Right honest sobbing that came pouring out of Ginny told her that her words hit their mark and her heart broke as she was so helpless to make her feel better.

“But why? Why then did he go along with it, all the way through, the marriage, the baby, if he can’t… God, he cannot even keep his bloody eyes off him for three seconds!” she screamed, suddenly raw with pain and anger and humiliation. “I can’t even begin to tell you how much it bothers me! It was him, always him, always his precious Ron, my beloved brother, who came first! He visited for him, he tolerated me because of him, sometimes I think he married me because Ron told him to do so!”

The look in Hermione’s eyes told her with unnecessary honesty that she was probably not far from the truth and she closed her eyes, tears still streaming down her face, suddenly not so sure anymore into her own ability to handle the truth.

“I think…” said Hermione trying to sound rational not to lose her friend to her grief completely. “I’m afraid this whole mess might be partially my fault.”


	34. Anything to stop the pain

She saw Ginny’s eyes pop open and look at her incredulously and before she could offer an explanation, the redhead waved her hand dismissively: “Don’t be ridiculous, Mione! How could my husband falling for my brother be your fault… oh, _God_!” she grimaced and her tears picked up with renewed vigour. “I can’t believe how awful this sounds! How did I _ever_ find myself in the middle of this?!”

“Oh, honey, I’m so sorry for you... you are the most innocent of us, a casualty of the most cruel circumstances and if I could spare you the pain, I would,” Hermione broke down suddenly and hugged her sister-in-law. “I know I should have never allowed things to come this far. In fact, come to think of it, I should have never stood between them. They are a force of nature, those two, when they’re together. But I went and split them apart and hence all this hurt and mess and broken lives!” sobbed Hermione, the frustration of the past few hours hitting her full force.

Ginny stared at her in confusion: “But how...?”

“I tricked Ron into marrying me...” Hermione finally admitted, sobs subsiding slowly as if she had no more tears to cry.

Ginny’s eyes went as wide as galleons: “You didn’t! But... how could you?”

“I made sure I got pregnant as fast as I could,” the older girl admitted in a defeated voice. “I saw Harry watching Ron with – I’m sorry but there’s no way of saying this without causing you pain – with such longing and need, that I knew it was just a matter of time once the war was over before he gets his wits and guts about him and makes his move on him. And I couldn’t have that. There was no way Ron would have denied him, I saw the way they stared at each other when they thought the other was not looking and my only hope was in beating Harry to it. And I had to have Ron to myself, I couldn’t... I still cannot imagine my life without him. He’s the only one for me, Ginny,” she looked at the ginger girl pleadingly, willing her to understand.

“I know you could have taken your pick, but there was never anyone but your brother for me. Victor is just a friend, a close friend, but he was never really an option... I had to kiss him to find that out. I felt nothing, while with Ron... he just looks at me, even after all this time and my stomach just flutters and my heart soars in pride that I’m able to call this man my own... I love him beyond anything I could ever make him understand and I did what I did because I could not picture myself living without this love... selfish, I know...” she smiled sadly through her drying tears and looked at her awed friend’s eyes with sorrow: “And I’m paying for this selfishness now... I wish you didn’t have to.”

“But what happened?” asked Ginny thoughtfully. “How come after all this time...?”

“Ron found out, as simple as that,” said Hermione with dull finality in her voice. “I don’t know what happened on that blasted stag night of Harry’s, no one would talk to me, but when I saw Ron get ready to take Harry out... he was all out for him, Ginny, he was out to get him... there is no other way to describe him. I’ve never seen Ron looking so dashing, or so... _primal_ , in my life. Things were awkward between the two of them for a while at that point, going from one extreme when Harry was avoiding Ron, to the other, when he couldn’t even keep his bloody hands to himself in my presence, always finding a pretence to touch him...”

Her eyes still flared angrily at the memory. “I guess Ron figured out this would be his one chance to set things right between them... And I was stupid enough not to stop him... as if I could...” she sighed.

After a moment of long silence Ginny was afraid to interrupt, Hermione picked up her story: “He came back sometimes in the wee hours of the morning, looking positively mortified. Actually, George brought him back almost as if he didn’t trust him that he’d actually make it home. But _George_... he was in a right state, Ginny... I’ve never seen him like this. He was pale, staggering, it was obvious that he’d been crying. But I saw he had something to say and you know your brother: when he sets his mind on something, he’s like Molly, there’s no stopping him. So he came right to me once Ron retired to our bedroom and asked me if I was ever willing to consider letting Ron go. Needless to say, I was beyond shocked....” she looked at Ginny to find some approval and felt slightly better when the redheaded girl nodded vigorously.

“But I just needed to look at him, at that hard determinate face, and I knew I won’t get him off my back unless I was perfectly clear, so we would never have to discuss this again. And I told him – I told him _no_ , I don’t care what Ron did, never in a million years would I be willing to let him go. And he still wouldn’t let me off the hook and asked me bluntly, what if Ron loved another.... and I knew it in that moment that I’ve lost him, that it was just a matter of time before my actions came back to haunt me... but I still wouldn’t give up. I told George that if we’re ever going to be parting with Ron, he’s going to have to leave _me_ , because there was no way in hell I would ever let him go. And then I told him everything, I told him, to make him understand, I told him what I’ve done... went out of my way to get the baby, just to get him to stay. I used magic and Muggle medicine, everything I could think of and with your brother’s prowess to procreate all it took me was a month...” she shrugged, suddenly unable to look at Ginny’s eyes, open wide in shock.

“I put everything on a line for him, my career, school, everything, securing Ron to myself was my only and primary objective. I was lucky that things turned out the way they did, that I still got to finish my schooling and got a career, but it wouldn’t have mattered if they didn’t, I was ready for it. I was willing to stay home with his kids, school myself from home if need be, anything, to keep him. He grounds me, he defines me, Ginny,” she looked at her friend pleadingly once again, but the redhead continued to gap at her with her mouth open.

“And then the baby came and I saw how happy it made Ron and I almost forgave myself... except that it did nothing to numb Harry’s feelings for him. Like me, he was determined to give Ron his best and I decided it was time to show him I’m _never_ letting go. So I decided it was time for more babies...”

“Oh.My.God. You didn’t...” gasped Ginny before her voice went numb.

“I did, too. Every single time. True, I wasn’t planning on twins, but with the Muggle medicine I was using it’s common... and I had to keep him, I had to keep Harry away from him for as long as I could. Fat load of good that did,” she said bitterly. “I should have known it would never work. If anything, giving Ron a family only made him more appealing in Harry’s eyes, you know how he always wanted a family of his own and once he set his eyes on Hugo, his little Ron... you know how they are, Harry is downright in love with the little one, just as much as with his father... I’m sorry,” she added when she saw tears prickling in Ginny’s eyes at her inconsiderate words.

“Anyway, George was shattered when he finally understood the depth of my deception. Still, he begged me to let go, asked me if I cared not for him and his happiness and told me I had no idea what I was standing against... but I couldn’t be swayed. I told him Ron’s happiness was here, with me and his kids and then he left and since then, he cannot stand to be in the same room with me. I should not have been so arrogant. I’m paying for it dearly, you know,” she turned her sad eyes towards Ginny who was still sitting as in cast in stone, dumbfounded.

“Ron heard us. He heard every word, apparently, and I think it set him free like he never expected to be free again. He threw it all in my face when we had a fight, of course. He said he would have forgiven me even now, if I came forward and I never did... So he told me I reduced him to the likes of a house-elf, his words exactly,  and he felt so used and manipulated that he decided to get back to me the only way he knew how: he got together with Harry. And I mean it like that, yes, _together_ , in the worse sense of the word,” she stressed when she saw a flicker of objection coming onto that mortified face of her sister-in-law.

Ginny’s tears once again spilled unabashedly, but Hermione’s heart was too drained to be able to express her compassion.

“But you know what, Ginny? He did what I never expected him to do, what I could never have made him do on my own. He’s just that brilliant on his own: He offered to stay with me, at least for a while, in spite of what I did to him, how I screwed up his life for my benefit. He will stay with me to help me raise the kids, at least until they are grown up enough to go to Hogwarts and then he will make his move. I couldn’t ask for more. But…” she closed her eyes to compose herself: “… of course, he’s making me pay for it, there’s no way I’m not going to have to share him with Harry from now on. And that’s enough for me, Ginny,” she looked at the other girl with determination in her eyes. “I can live with that. It’s not like I can remember a time when I _didn’t_ have to share him with Harry. It’s a small price for me to pay. I love Harry like a brother; it will hardly be any different for me than it is now. But I can’t make that decision for you, honey,” he looked at the young sobbing mother-to-be with gentle pity.

“You’re going to have to decide on your own if Harry is worth keeping even when you know that you can never have his heart. And doubt it not!” she looked at the younger girl sternly. “Don’t you think for a second that you could put Harry in a position to choose between him and you and come out on the other side as a winner! I’ve got a glimpse of what’s between them, Ginny, I’ve never seen Ron so royally pissed off and he was never so brutal to me in his life – and you know he’s not known for his considerate attitude to begin with!”

“Oh, sweet Merlin, what am I to do?” Ginny leaned her pretty head in her hands as if she wanted to hide from the world and the impossible decision that was so suddenly thrown in front of her. “I’m not like you... I don’t think I can do this... quietly accept his choice, pretending not to notice his indiscretions, his deceitful excuses for leaving me to be with him... I would grow bitter and resentful and make our lives living hell! I’d start hating Ron and I really love my big brother, this is not even his fault, it’s not anyone’s fault that these stupid hearts of ours act on their own. And I can’t imagine living without him, my Harry, either, Hermione,” she looked at the other girl pleadingly as if she could make her understand the depth of her despair.

“He’s going to be a dad soon, I can’t begin to tell you how much I was looking forward to this baby, hoping he would help bring us together as a family. And now... am I supposed to rob our baby of his father before he’s even born to live with my pride, alone?”

Some residue tears ran down her cheeks on their own as she was sure she had no more strength to cry.  “I hate my life...” she whispered in numb despair and stared in front of herself with an empty look, not really taking in anything, not even able to move as if any action might cut her further.

Hermione’s heart broke and she crossed the distance between them to hug her fiercely. “Oh, please don’t say so.... you know he loves you as much as he’ll ever love a woman. I don’t think he can help himself, loving Ron more. He was his first, the first ray of sun in his gloomy life and I think Harry’s heart needed that warmth so desperately that it never forgot where the love and the comfort came from. He’s not willingly hurting you, you know... You give him so much, you make him stand proud and tall, as any man would be, having such a beautiful, smart and successful wife to stand by his side, you’re going to give him family soon and that’s something Ron never could! You’re his ideal woman, strong and righteous just like his mother was, he respects you, he will always protect you, you will always bear his name....”

“I know, Mione... I know... all that and more... and yet all I ever wanted was his heart... you know, the one that he gave away before I even came into the picture...” Ginny sighed quietly. “I suppose I could learn to live with it, it’s as much my blame as it is yours – I came at him hard and I kept coming at him until he couldn’t let me down softly anymore. If only I could stop the pain...” she said with bitterness in her voice and Hermione suddenly knew that there was really only one remedy and that she’s going to have to feed it to Ginny without asking her permission. She closed her eyes looking for strength to do what needed to be done and she thought to herself: _C’mon, Hermione, you can do this. You’ve done far worse and this is for him, and for them, for all of us._

Suddenly chillingly cool she released the younger girl from her embrace and asked softly: “Ginny, look at me... just look at me, darling, please... you’re going to have to trust me for a moment... can you do that?”

“Mione, what...?” but Ginny’s tired words hung up in the air as Hermione Granger Weasley, Senior Ministry Official, First order of Merlin, pointed her wand at her best friend and spoke calmly: “ _Obliviate_!”

Ginny’s expression immediately turned dreamy and unfocused as Hermione proceeded to speak clearly and adamantly: “You will not remember any of this conversation. Ron and Harry are just friends, the best of friends. It’s good that they’re so close and you couldn’t be happier that your brother and your husband get along so well. In fact, you understand perfectly well that sometimes they need time off with each other and you are more than ready to give them some space, it makes the relationship breathe so much better. You will be supportive of the time they spend together, the family ties need to be strong. If you ever have any doubts, you will come to me directly and talk to me about it. Is that clear?”

“Perfectly...” said Ginny in a dreamy voice and Hermione forced a smile on her face as if she was trying to persuade herself that she was not, in fact, meddling with her best friend’s mind.

“Now, what do you say we head from this stuffy apartment back to the greens of the Burrow, I’m sure our husbands are back from their Quidditch practice already and I would really fancy a stroll!” She grabbed her under the still somewhat limp arm and disapparated them. Once they appeared just outside the fence that separated the Burrow property from the surrounding she completed the spell by a series of complicated flicks of the wand and finally brought Ginny to full attention.

“Oh, Hermione... what happened? I feel so dizzy...” Ginny almost stumbled and her friend hurried to catch her. “Now, now, careful there, dear! You don’t want to do anything to hurt yourself right now, not in your condition! We best head back inside, you might want to lie down next to my children, Molly will be positively livid with me if I let you over-exert yourself!”

“Perhaps is for the best...” Ginny nodded, still not entirely steady on her feet and Hermione strived to mask the pity in her concerned look.

But it seemed Ginny only needed one thing to set her right: “Harry!” she exclaimed happily, suddenly beaming and waiving excitedly at a couple of figures that just emerged from the tall grass at the edge of the forest. Hermione had to swallow a lump in her throat when she saw a slightly guilty expression on the face of the raven-haired wizard and she felt blood pumping wildly at the cage of her chest when she saw a languid smile spread over her beautiful husband’s features.

She would recognise _that_ smile anywhere, it was his “ _I just got what I wanted, let me be_ ” smile; the one that always followed their love-making, never failing to make her feel on top of the world – and it felt like needles to her heart when she was painfully reminded that this smile will no longer be reserved for her alone, that she’s going to have to watch her husband wear it, knowing, she had nothing to do with it. _But it is all your doing, Hermione,_ she scorned herself and watching Harry positively glow with happiness she told herself: _Payback time, Hermione. You put Harry through this for years, you have to let him enjoy it now! You have to..._

With a numb heart she watched Harry hurry towards his wife and fuss about her, not daring to shed another look to his partner in crime, but suddenly Hermione found herself swept of her feet by her giant ginger husband who grabbed her in his arms and cheerfully spun her around. She squealed in surprise, but felt his tight embrace as if a warm blanket was wrapped tightly at her chilled heart. Deeply immersed in his incredible warm earthy scent she once again felt loved, protected and special. She knew she shouldn’t, she knew it was a passing blessing, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. It felt so right to be in his embrace again, clinging tightly to his warm wonderful body and when she felt his lips caressing her neck she thought carelessly that, perhaps, her penance will not be as bad as she feared. Clearly, Ron was not willing to give her up just yet, not even to get in Harry’s good books. She caught a dark jealous look shooting from the green orbs shining angrily from a petrified face and she snuggled up closer to her husband. Maybe only by name, but Ron was still hers. This affair was far from over.


	35. Breakdown

_"But if I call you out of habit_

_I'm out of love and I gotta have it_

_Would you give it to me_

_If I fit you needs_

_Like when we both knew we had it…”_

Breakdown, Guns n’Roses

 

Draco lit a candle and it flickered to life casting long shadows around the room, slowly sinking into the evening darkness. Finally - the end to this impossible infinite weekend at long last! _God_ , he came to hate the weekends! Five of them, exactly, since he had started this impossible... _thing_ , affair, godknowswhat they had with Weasley. During the week it was bearable – he got to see him and even though there was a constant quiet yearning present, almost like an itch he could not scratch, for the redhead to acknowledge him – sometimes he would and sometimes he wouldn’t – his hungry heart somehow got what it needed so badly with this dreamy smile or another, a long sex-charged look that made him shiver and tensed every muscle about him, or even a touch, a whispered _“Tonight?”_ \- always a question, a question Draco only ever had one answer to.

They managed to meet twice in the first week – yeah, he kept track of every wonderful crazy encounter, that was just how _pathetic_ he had become – and then it was three times in the second and the third week - and this last week it was almost every weeknight, how did that come about?! Monday to Thursday, every night but Friday he ended up undone into gasping broken bits of happiness under his gorgeous lover who seemed inexhaustible... and it was just _spectacular_ every fucking time, wasn’t it? It seemed the more they did it, kept meeting in secret, kept touching and kissing and teasing impossibly, kept fucking each other raw and craving for more, kept holding each other afterwards, hardly breaking apart until the dawn-fall – the more addictive it became... at least for Draco. There was no doubt in the blond’s mind that he was infected with Ron Weasley down to the very core and sinking into dangerous obsession and insane crazy emotion that should have no room between them – and with alarming speed at that.

And Ron was just... _Merlin_ , he couldn’t figure him out and it was driving him up the wall.

Sometimes - usually after the weekends, he noticed – the redhead would hardly look at him, staring at Potter instead with a goofy smile on his pretty freckled face that hardly left any room for any wrong interpretation of what was going on between them – at least to someone as smitten, alert and jealous as Draco. On days like this Potter kept as far away from his redheaded lover as he could or his lecture inevitable turned into a blunder. He handled Ron’s presence even worse than Draco did – at least the blond had the advantage of years-long drill in holding onto his self-composure.

But on other days Ron’s eyes flew around the classroom restlessly, wandering towards _him_ more times than not and at times like these Draco couldn’t stop himself from staring. He tried looking elsewhere; he had god-honest tried, but hope or intuition or what other else was there of that rot literally pulled his eyes in the direction of the lovely redhead, following him around like a sunflower reaching for the sun, until their eyes finally met and they caught each other staring… And an inevitably tense moment ensued that should have been awkward, but never really was – until Ron smiled one of his slow provocative sexy lopsided grins that never failed to make Draco’s breath hitch and his eager starved cock fill with blood, and mouthed: “ _Tonight_?”

And the blond might as well have picked up his bag and left the class, _every.bloody.time_ , because he couldn’t register a single word that was being lectured over the wonderful rush of excitement and a flash of colourful memories of their last encounter shooting through his obsession-addled brain.

But weekends were Draco’s time in hell. There was no Ron for him on weekends, not one weekend, not ever. Weekends were for Potter, they were for the Mudblood, for his kids, for his enormous family – but never for him, not for the forgotten secret lover that had no place in the daylight. He began to dread them and this one, in particular, was one of the worst, as if an over-dose of Ron during the week caused his absence to be that much harder to take.

The damn thing just dragged on and on and on, with no end in sight... He’s never had a more empty couple of days in his life! Everything seemed grey without the lovely redhead, his world only burst into colour if he closed his eyes and allowed himself to dream about him, about those enchanted moments in his arms, surrounded by all that wonderful smell of sex and… he couldn’t allow his mind to go there. There couldn’t be anything but sex between them, Ron had made that perfectly clear, except that Draco’s stubborn mind somehow chose to ignore it and it wandered off into the most bizarre directions…

Like how it would be to wake up with him. Like… every day. _Gods_ … Or to lie with him, just lie down, wrapped into those massive arms, near that hot smooth skin, with his head leaning into his chest, closing his eyes and just listening… listening to his heartbeat, to the solid life inside that broad chest that just spelled safety and comfort. _Just_ … his heartbeat. The best sound in this world. Or, perhaps, to take a slow unhurried shower with his redheaded god and watch him slowly rub soap into that perversely perfect array of smooth hard muscles that chased him through his wildest dreams...  and lick off the scented rivulets of water making their way down that infernal wet body that made him want to go down on his knees and worship it. He’d take it all in, drop by drop, every single last speck of it, let the taste of him melt on his tongue, satisfying the hunger he had no name for.

 _Merlin_ , he was desperate! And it wasn’t like he didn’t try to fight it! He knew full well how sick it was, wanting to spend the entire weekend in bed simply because it smelled of him; his reasonable mind shouted at him what an unhealthy road he was taking, itching for a wank every time he allowed his loose thoughts to wander away and deliver him at the mercy of the same memories all over again. He hated himself being so helpless - god knows he hated it so! - therefore he gathered all of his Malfoyness about him and went out of the cursed, blasted apartment, where the very walls whispered of his presence, of their time together.

He couldn’t muster enough strength to go to the Manor, he just couldn’t risk betraying himself in front of Mother, who’d probably take one good look at him and notice the change. Because he was certain he must have changed. He must have. He felt different and he was convinced he must be looking different as well. And it was dreadful and exciting all in one. It was like the air was reaching his lungs for the first time in years, feeling him up with clarity and uncertainty and colour and joy and… it was scary and it was making him dizzy, but he wouldn’t give up the feeling for the world.

Somehow he felt as if… he had a place in this world. As if he was needed. He was desired. He had to be here. His life had a purpose. And if that purpose meant he needed to make it through to the next time, when he could let himself be wrapped into that warm godly-scented embrace again – so be it. He felt anchored when he was with Ron. As if he finally arrived where he was destined to go from the start. Ron felt like home. Like good and right and home.

But the time in between was _murder_. He tried to go flying, but he was just too bloody battered from his merciless lover to be able to spend any length of time on the broom. Not happening, everything hurt – that impossible redheaded berk! Then he tried seeing a Quidditch match - but he didn’t feel like company and it was boring when he was watching it all by himself. In the middle of the game he found himself staring into the empty space and thinking of that perfection of an arse that once wore Gryffindor house colours and he had to leave very quickly or he would have embarrassed himself dreadfully.

And after that he just strolled from one shop to another and every bloody thing his eyes stopped on was labelled with _“Oh, he would have liked this so… it would have looked fantastic on him… surely he’d appreciate… perhaps I should get it….”_ And somehow he ended up levitating home half of the Hogsmeade merchandise, only to collapse it all onto the floor of his solitary apartment and feel betrayed when it did nothing to soothe his loneliness.

He missed his _touch_. God, it was only a good couple of days and he missed his touch already. The few times when he succumbed to temptation and allowed himself to ponder dreamily of the unforgettable moments they’ve spent together, his skin seemed to have caught fire at the mere memory and he felt flushed and dizzy and desperate for a wank. And during the miserable two days he must have wanked every fucking drop of come wearing Ron’s name out of his fucked up body.

How the hell was that even possible, was beyond him! He felt destroyed, as if he had been over a battle and not a god-damn orgy under the heavenly body of one man – and yet his tired bruised body just couldn’t get enough… Not enough of colourful imagination spinning around one image and one image only; never enough of this sense memory or another that transformed every breath he took, every casual glance he made into all things Ron. And it turned his senses on impossibly. The sunset reminded him of the silken hair, glittering like red gold in the first rays of the morning. The Indian summer skies glowing in their blue beauty only called one name to him and he only had to close his eyes and feel the warm breeze on his face to think of him, of the warm moist breath caressing his skin from up close, flushing it by its very presence – and he found himself as hard as a rock already.

He could only hope the effect would wear out in time – after all, there was no guarantee Ron would want to see him again any time soon. _If at all_ , a panicked little voice in his head whispered whenever a thought like that crossed his mind and he gritted his teeth together and reminded himself stubbornly that he had promised! Somehow, unthinkably, Draco had managed to wrench a promise out of the redhead; a promise that he’ll be back and though this was only good until their next time – he _did_ make it and Gryffindors were uncompromising when it came to their given word… but he didn’t promise where and when and he didn’t promise soon.

But now the weekend was finally over and if nothing else, he was due at Hogwarts tomorrow and he would see him – and the very chance of at least resting his eyes on that pretty mesmerising face again and soaking up its beauty counted as much as salvation in the books of one Draco Malfoy. He _needed_ him. Oh, bugger, he needed… to see him. At least to see him, he’ll think about other things later.

And tomorrow he would. Only the night still separated him from revelling in the presence of his impossible secret lover again and he had to find a way to make it short. He was going to indulge in a long luxurious bath first, which would hopefully make him sleepy and then he’d wrap himself in his favourite “Ron” shirt, that always smelled so heavenly of him, and try to catch up on his beauty sleep. Merlin knows he needed it; sleep was something that didn’t come that easy for one post-war Draco Malfoy. It was unpredictably sown up with nightmares and flashes of dreadful scenery that startled him awake in the middle of the night, sweaty and panting in panic at rapidly blurring memories and always feeling destroyed and afraid to go back to sleep.

Except in Ron’s arms...  Inside that embrace he slept like a child, uncorrupted, unconscious, undisturbed, completely at peace. Even nightmares didn’t dare follow him near Ron’s heart. And that’s why he lo... well, he didn’t, did he? He wasn’t allowed to. He closed his eyes in the sudden onslaught of unbearable despair how very impossible this whole... _thing_ was, this… _uhhh!_...whatever this terrific emotion between them was...

How did he allow himself to end up so dependent on another person? Didn’t his stupid heart know how crazy and unacceptable this was? _Apparently not_. Silly mindless muscle. How was it, that Draco Malfoy, the only heir to the rich and mighty wizarding family and all in all a very attractive young man, failed to benefit from all the advantages of his privileged position - and instead chose to go to his bed alone and dream of someone he could never have?

God, he was fucked! In his frustration he grabbed the first thing that slipped into his hand, a portly fire poker and smashed it across the room with all the might of his Black temper and felt strangely relieved and empty at the same time. It felt good to be physical, but his practical self already regretted the inevitable damage his anger caused to the polished hard-wood floor.

“Fuck you, Weasley,” he mumbled to himself as he moved across the room to inspect the damage and fix what he could.

“Well, that was the general idea...” came a dark warm voice from behind his back and the blond nearly jumped to the ceiling with his heart-rate shooting through the roof as he turned around abruptly, startled and incredulous... and suddenly awash with unfathomable happiness.

“... but judging by your temper tonight, Malfoy, I’m not so sure it was a good one,” Ron finished his sentence, a bit of daring darkness, a bit of dark laughter stuck at the bottom of his stormy eyes. “Perhaps I should leave...” he suggested, but he didn’t move and somehow Draco knew he wasn’t going to.

He came. He came to him, almost as if he could hear his despair, and nothing else mattered. He knew he wasn’t going anywhere, something inside him communicated to him that Ron was exactly where he wanted to be and it completely melted him on the inside. Of course, he couldn’t let him see it, not right away.

“How about announcing yourself next time?” he complained with feigned annoyance. “It’s only civil, you know,” he mumbled, but suddenly found himself pressed against the wall and the bulge in his pants was being massaged by the warm hard thigh, trapping it completely, irreversibly, in a way that it was making his head knock against the wall and gasp in delight and... oh, _sweetmotherofgod_ , self-restraint was so over-rated...

“Ron...” he whispered into the warm mouth that was upon him with no delay and all he got in return was a grunted dark noise, suffocated somewhere between two merged sets of plush lips trying to battle for dominance and devour each other as if they were kept apart for years, not hours.

“Nothing civil about this...” Ron finally growled as Draco stopped pretending he could hold himself back for another moment and just wrapped his long legs around his waist and whispered _“Fuck me... fuck me, Ron...”_ over and over again.... until he got his wish.

The redhead was brutal. It was as if he didn’t know how to be anything else, not around Draco; as if he was angry at him and himself for losing his self-control so spectacularly and couldn’t stay away; as if he wanted to punish him for all the ways in which this was wrong and hurtful... only he couldn’t, because the blond beauty accepted everything he had to offer with greed and hunger for more; fed on every bite, begged for every bruising kiss, keened at every hard rough shove of the perfect arse pounding him into the floor with no mercy. Once again they didn’t make it to the bed, neither of them bothered. What they had was primal, so god-forsaken and needy and urgent - _now, bloody-well now, right here, right this minute!!!_ \- they couldn’t bear to stay apart.

Ron let out a howl once he breached him, a dark short abandoned sound of completion and unbearable lust tightly packed under a violent tension in his voice and he could have raped him if it wasn’t exactly what Draco’s trembling aching insides needed in this moment. The debauched blond never managed to get to that luxurious bath he was planning and he was still very much slick from the multiple unsatisfactory attempts at self-pleasuring during the day, so it took next to no time for Ron to slide inside him, all the way in, sheathed to the balls and pressing impossibly against every piece of heaven that ever resided in the tight greedy hole of one Draco Malfoy.

“You slut,” Ron whispered in a tight dangerous voice. “You crazy beautiful blond slut... you were waiting for me, weren’t you? _Weren’t you_??” he demanded his answer and Draco realized what turned him on. And as Ron’s shaft finally began massaging against the rosy core of his sweet juices and unstoppable screams inside him, words just crashed out of him like a tidal wave.

“Yeah... yeah... waiting... just waiting... _Christ, Ron_... two impossibly long days... how could you leave me to myself for so long, you cruel randy bastard!? _Merlin, don’t stop..._ You had me waiting forever... _give it to me now..._ waiting... and hoping... and waiting and playing with myself, thinking of you... of this... _oh, motherfuck..._ of how your huge fat cock knocks my world off my hinges... of my arse, milking you... _motherofjesus, Ron... so close..._ you need to spear me... pound your beautiful dripping cock straight into me… through me... let yourself be captured... imprisoned... enslaved... so you could never leave... _yeah, like this_... inside me... inside this slave... of yours… only yours…ram inside me, you bastard... deep... deeper.... deeper into the dark tight space of this slick hot cave you own... where all your sins and all your dreams come to life... where you put me apart... where you pound us together... into one... just one… with you… _Ron_!!!”

And the redhead lost it in the same moment, a slippery “ _fuck… Draco…!_ ” and a hollered string of obscenities sown with helpless yelps of his name testifying just how powerless he was against the pull he felt towards the gorgeous blond that he came to put apart – and got far more than he ever expected. But this was Malfoy. He _should_ have known better. He really should have kept his distance, but…  He couldn’t stay away, _he couldn’t_.

And once he sunk into the very depths of Draco Malfoy, his arch-enemy, his nemesis, clawing at his back in hopeless attempts to merge with him, gasping his name, his given name in ultimate surrender and with a wonderfully stuttering tongue, sucking him deeply into his very core with his sinful alabaster serpentine body, sweet dirty mouth and begging devoted eyes, he was lost; lost in more ways than one.

He collapsed over him without an atom of strength to spare, boneless, sweaty and fucked out of his mind, with echo of his name still ringing through the room and through his head. _This_ … couldn’t be good. It was all wrong, it was going to be so painful and _God_ , did it make him feel mean and dirty! But at the same time it felt like the only thing right in this world and when he saw his face reflect inside the silver orbs, it was somehow just the way it was always meant to be between them. When he broke through Draco Malfoy’s defences, his haughtiness, his gilded worthless armour, what was left was his equal. The man that understood the very gist of him with next to no words and didn’t judge anything he found.

And he didn’t feel that way about anyone else, least of all the one man he loved from the bottom of his heart - his Harry… and it scared him mad and excited him crazy at the same time. Harry was… Harry was everything. He was the best; the kindest selfless human alive, the most loyal friend ever and above all - sexy like hell; Ron had been drooling over him even before he realized that one could actually drool over anyone other than girls and Viktor Krum! Harry was Ron’s idol; his love almost surreal and at times Ron felt like pinching himself when it dawned on him, that it was _him_ , the _insignificant Ron Weasley_ , Mr. Nobody, that Harry Potter – _that_ Harry Potter, Harry from the books and now legends – claimed to love and want. Harry made him want to be a better man, made him want to try to rise above himself. He could never be worthy of Harry. Harry was perfection.

Malfoy was anything but. Draco just made him feel like he could be himself. His ordinary, thoughtless, brutal, even somewhat corrupt, imperfect self. And perhaps that’s why the redhead felt the blond fit like a glove onto his less-than-perfect hand. They clicked with each other just _there_ , at the very spot that made them human, and it somehow spelled magnificent magic and mind-boggling attraction for both of them. And it bothered Ron. It bothered him, because… it was never meant to be this complicated and… he could feel his precious control seeping through his fingers. Draco Malfoy just affected him so.

And as if he wanted to confirm that they merged on levels that were beyond comprehension, Draco spoke quietly, unexpectedly, his voice still stuck between rapid gasps of air that his pounding heart demanded:

“You broke me…” and then: “I love you.”

And as Ron’s eyes got big and impossibly blue, as if he couldn’t believe what he’d just heard him say, he repeated in an even quieter voice, but in every way leaden with a sort of unavoidable resignation into faith: “I love you. I’m in love with you.”

Christ, this was… it was never meant to be this way. Ron rolled off him without saying another word and just lay there, next to him, flushed skin touching side by side, staring at the ceiling, lost in thoughts, lost for words, with his hand absent-mindedly sinking into the silken red strands of hair as if he was trying to make sense of it and of his complicated life.

“I broke myself,” he said finally, quietly and added with some sort of desperate determination: “You shouldn’t be saying that… saying such things… you don’t know… I love Harry… you’ll find someone…”

“I’ve found someone!” Draco hissed in a sudden outburst of temper and his fingers sought out his other hand and it was a strange sort of comfort that Ron didn’t pull it away, but let their fingers intertwine. “Why are you here, then? If you love him… Potter… why are you here, Ron?”

And instead of the fingers escaping his hand just like he almost expected them to, Ron just squeezed his fist almost brutally, as if he wanted to tell him that he needed him to take his anger, his rough strength, his frustration with the rest of what came with him, and admitted in a voice that sounded almost defeated:

“I don’t know… I don’t have a clue… I swear to God, I honestly don’t know. I was just… pulled into coming here, it was the weirdest terrible impulse that I got and I just… acted on it, I suppose. It’s not for sex, Merlin knows it’s not for that! I’ve had that… plenty of that… and with not just one person. I needed to show my wife she’s still very much desirable and Harry… he wouldn’t keep his greedy wonderful hands of me, even though he promised, so – no. Not sex. Though, this – I could understand. I don’t know what the fuck it is about you, Malfoy… Draco, that _just_ … mother of god, man…”

He shook his flaming head as if he almost couldn’t believe it and Draco felt a just the oddest bit of pride that _this_ , the one thing there was no doubt about between them, was just as overwhelming and word-defying for Ron as it was for him. And the redhead actually tilted his head sideways so he looked him in the eye and said with a sly sexy smile:

“Perhaps it’s just your dirty mouth… No one’s ever talked me through fucking like that… tell me what I do to them the way you do… so I could almost feel the way you’re getting it and it’s just… mind-fucking-boggling and so insanely sexy, it just blows the lid off my brain and… _dear_ G _od_ , Malfoy… Draco… you’re the fuck of the century, no one can ever take that title from you! I’m getting hard just thinking of it, of this… fuck…”

Suddenly he was staring up into the ceiling again as if he needed to look away to resist the temptation… or perhaps because there were other things to discuss:

“And I end up wishing it was only that,” he said quietly. “That would have been easy, that would have been the way it was meant to be between us, the way _I_ meant it to be… But now it’s all this… _more_ … It’s bizarre that I can only talk to you about certain things, intimate things, like being a real bastard and still fucking my wife even though she no longer holds my heart… just because she’s there, and she’s still sexy and lovely and smart and all the things she was when I wanted to believe I loved her, so it’s enough and I still want to, I still can…

And my Harry… the way he just cannot keep his word around me and his fingers off me and it’s sweet and funny and out-of-this-fucking-world that someone like him should find someone like me - _me, just me_ – irresistible… And how both of them, neither of them, was enough to keep me away from coming tonight.

I don’t know what I would have done if you weren’t here. Go home perhaps, be miserable for a while, feeling jittery and unfulfilled and just sending you to seven hells quietly… But I was really hoping you _would be_ and you _were_ …. Almost like you knew I needed it. Perhaps I’m here because… I just needed to be myself for a while and fuck all… you know?

I had to be this perfect man, son, father, husband this weekend, just like every weekend… They were all there, all of them demanding something from me and sometimes I’m not up to it and sometimes it’s like there’s not enough of me for all of them and at the same time I’m so much more than what they need me to be… I don’t know… Fuck me, if I know, Malfoy… Draco. I couldn’t stay away. And now…”

He looked at him again, with strange longing and almost sadly and spoke like a true Gryffindor he was:

“Now I can’t stay.”

And the world, Draco’s world, stopped just like that. Somehow their intertwined hands dissolved almost as if all the life ran out of Draco’s fingers, as if they understood that they couldn’t keep holding on to Ron’s hand because he, the man in charge, didn’t want them to and they were as defeated and as destroyed as their owner felt.

And Ron felt his distress, he felt the bloody gash he had just made into this quiet sacred entity they’ve become for a while and he knew it was not going to be enough, but he tried anyway:

“It’s not like you’re not enough… or good enough… god forbid… you’re all that and more, Heaven knows someone will once be very _very_ lucky to have you…”

“But not you,” Draco interrupted quietly, a strange masochistic pain in him forcing him to make Ron say the words, to ruin it, to make it irreversibly lost between them. “Someone, who’s not you, Ron… Weasley… is that what you’re saying?”

“You’re too much, alright?!” erupted Ron so suddenly, sounding so frustrated and desperate that there couldn’t be any doubt how much this decision was costing him. “You’re too bloody much, I can’t handle it, not right now, not with this mess my life’s become, not with you saying you loved me, saying it like you mean it… I can’t, Draco, not now… I thought you and I… I though we were going to be this occasional thing… this casual thing… just a couple of bastards working their tension out… and it was going to be simple and uncomplicated and not-so-fucking-much, man! And now it’s become this… _thing_ … and you say those things and I give a fuck and god… no!”

He got up abruptly to get dressed, with wild determination shining out of his wondrous blue eyes and Draco felt as if someone was pulling him apart by stitches. He was suddenly breathless with pain that struck just with enough delay that he realized how very helpless he was. He briefly wondered at the bottom of his dizzy drunken thoughts if it would make any difference if he begged, but Ron had _that_ look in his eyes, that “Gryffindor Keeper” look, that said “ _No.You.Won’t!_ ” with so much determination, he knew it was hopeless to attempt breaking past his defences…

But the bitter despair that suddenly washed over him like a storm pushed him to try anyway:

“You _coward_!” he hissed at him and just because they were so insanely in tune with each other, it was the one thing that stopped Ron dead in his tracks and he looked at him with defiant, guilty eyes. But though Draco felt like going on his fucking knees for him and just beg his redheaded god to keep him, to keep _this_ , whatever little was between them, because it felt as if this was his whole world – he did exactly what a proper Malfoy would do and went at him with all his cold disdain and livid, shivering core, carefully dressed up as justified wrath, shooting precise lethal arrows at everything this could have been:

“You bloody coward! I should have known better than to _ever_ listen to you and believe a single word of what you had to say! You come here, into my home, with words of being sincere and honest and yourself – and the first glimpse you get of me, you run like a Hungarian Horntail is behind your back! What was it, that you saw, Ron, that made you run with your tail between your hind legs?

Surely you knew what I had to offer; surely you had to know what I wanted you for! Is my heart tainted, then? Is my love so far beneath the wonderful war-hero that it’s worth nothing other than stepping on it and crushing underneath your unforgiving heel!? Is that to be my punishment for all the torment I’ve put you through at school, back then, before the war?! _I was a child_ , you daft moron! I knew no better, I had no other means to get close to you, to show you how insanely attractive and worthy of attention I found you! It was never about Potter for me, it was all about you, you crazy redheaded bastard!

And now you dare tell me, you don’t want me?! And that’s _after_ you’ve fucked me, oh, how very convenient, Mr. Irresistible! And _after_ you gave me your little speech about wanting my complete honesty – well, you’ve got it now, goddammit, you’ve got it, you mean evil motherfucker:

I’m so in love with you I can’t fucking function without you and I’ve been this way ever since you kissed me in the fourth year! _You.Kissed.Me._ You showed me… _this_. That there was a chance at love. You. You showed me this and you gave me this and it had changed everything! And now you want to take it away. All of it. Even the tiny hope that burned all this years. Cause that’s just how cruel you are. I’ve known Dementors with more soul than you, Weasley.

And that’s just because it’s _you_ , who doesn’t want to be completely honest with me; because it’s you who can’t deal with what you feel about me, about us, about all the scary wonderful things we could have been, and it just goes so fucking _beyond_ everything you’re ready to deal with. Because this is not comfortable and it’s not lovely like your wife; and it’s not sweet and charming and perfect like Potter. But it’s still you, Weasley. You’ll never feel at home, you’ll never feel yourself with anyone but me. And you know it. And you know _I_ know it. I love you. I meant it. Every word. Just the way I said it. Now leave!”

By the end of his words Ron was so ashen white he was almost transparent and even his freckles seemed to have disappeared.

“Draco…” he said in a shaken voice, but the blond had no other tools than his voice to stop the pain from coming and he had hollered at him “ _Leave_!!!” with all his might…. before he had completely collapsed into himself and mercifully, thankfully, Ron disapparated before an out-of-this world howl broke apart Draco’s voice and his sanity.

He didn’t know how he spent the next few horror-filled minutes, but when he next came to his senses, he found himself in an absolutely wrecked apartment, trashed to bits and broken to pieces just like he felt himself. He just sunk to his knees in the middle of the wreckage, his bone-tired shaking legs, dizzy with a feeling of absolute helplessness and abandon, no longer able to support him and he stared at the closed door for long moments mercifully numb…. And then he felt his obsession sipping in with a vengeance and as his very chest filled with a feeling of suffocating pulsating misery, his abandoned yelp came out as nothing but a coarse whisper:

“Sweet Merlin and Rowena, what have I done?! Please… come back…. Ron… please, come back… No...”

And then his world went black around him.

~

And in another household, with a soft body of his wife carefully wrapped around him, surrounded by the gentle snoring sounds of his children, lay another miserable young man. As if completely detached from the comforting scenery around him, Ron was lying on his back, staring at the ceiling, not seeing anything, not part of this calm serene world. His blue eyes were numb with overwhelming emotion he had no name for and he didn’t care about lying to himself it was not there. He couldn’t get rid of the grief-stricken image of the beautiful blond young man even if he shut his eyes tightly and after a while he didn’t even bother anymore. He just had the most awkward feeling he somehow managed to squash his one chance at happiness into this giant ball of misery and threw it away.

And for once in his life, he didn’t know how to fix it.

“ _Forgive me…_ ” The words he never managed to say to his outraged bitter blond lover, though they were on the tip of his tongue the whole time. “Forgive me, Draco.”


	36. Broken

_“I'm falling apart, I'm barely breathing_  
 _With a broken heart that's still beating_  
 _In the pain, there is healing_  
 _In your name I find meaning_  
 _So I'm holdin' on, I'm holdin' on, I'm holdin' on_  
 _I'm barely holdin' on to you…”_

Broken, Lifehouse

 

When Draco woke up for the first time, the world still seemed cast in shadow. The edges of all things around him were blurred as if some divine mercy didn’t want the harsh reality to strike too hard. His dampened brain struggled in vain to remember what had happened and how did he end up curled up into himself on the floor. His limbs felt leaden and too weak to move, but his unfocused eyes fluttered across the apartment that looked as if someone had left a herd of drunken hippogriffs on the loose – and nothing made sense.

And then the memory as sharp as scythe slashed across his mind, _“...I can’t stay”,_ and he remembered that this was the world without Ron Weasley, his world now, and he let his eyes close slowly as if the darkness behind his eyelids was his only protection from this terrible reality he didn’t want to live in. And when it all faded to black again it was a mercy.

~

Ron couldn’t take it. He couldn’t take the weight of guilt, pressing like a leaden ring against his temples, whenever his thoughts strolled towards the memory of what he had done; couldn’t take the strange storm crashing at the walls of his chest from the inside, making him short of breath, tearing him apart; he couldn’t even take the serenity of his warm comfortable home with his sleeping family around him anymore – he didn’t belong with them tonight, he couldn’t stay here, in this place of innocence and simple straight-forward love; not now, when there was someone out there who knew what he’s done, knew him for who he really was, and needed the beast inside of him.

It never did Ron any good to run – and he wouldn’t run now, he decided. And if Draco Malfoy tried hexing him before he’d be able to say what he set out to say, then he better be quick and he better be good, cause the redhead was willing to stand his ground against the blond menace for once! Ron decided no one gets to call him a coward, not ever again.

He whispered a few sweet nothings into his wife’s ear when he moved from underneath her, making her mumble something incoherently in her sleep, then proceeded to cover her caringly with a heavy blanket – the nights were finally turning colder – and cast a mild sleeping spell over her and over the children to make them sleep well into the morning. Then he disapparated, hoping that his vengeful lover didn’t bother to change the wards just yet and he would get scattered from Scotland to Timbuktu.

When his eyes adjusted to the darkness, the first emotion that hit him was one of pure panic – _what the fuck_?! Clearly something had gone terribly wrong in here! He should have told Draco to change his wards instead of taking advantage of the young man’s carelessness – he sprung from a family of renowned Death Eaters after all and it would be a miracle if there were none left out there dying to take vengeance for this war crime or another!

 _Merlin’s beard, the place_! The beautiful place, perfect in its simple minimalistic form mere hours ago, was turned into a complete mess of broken glass, turned around closets, torn down curtains and whatnot debris scattered about. It would take his mother to undo the damage. And throw the ghost of the late Albus Dumbledore in for good measure!

But as much as his detached brain wondered about it, Ron instantly forgot all about the destruction around him when he finally spotted the contours of a motionless body lying in the midst of havoc and his heartbeat suddenly threatened to jump out of his chest and start a colony of its own.

“ _Shit_... Malfoy... Draco... you bloody fool... what the hell happened here?” the redhead whispered and practically leaped over the debris with two steps of his long legs. As soon as he reached the blond, he sunk down on his knees and picked up the nearly weightless body of young man and held him close, fearing the worst. The moonlight shone on the placid face bathing it in strange ethereal beauty; the skin as pale as if it was made from that very light, breathing so shallow he might as well have been dead.

But it was there, the breath and the heartbeat, however faint, and the feeling of remorse that hit Ron full in the chest was instantly mixed with stubborn hope. He leaned into him, gripping the motionless body tight, and shivered when he touched his skin. Draco’s hands were ice cold and clammy, but his brow burned as if it was on fire and the redhead knew that if the grey eyes could open, they would be feverish.

“Have you fallen ill, then? You must have, you poor sod…” he managed, the sound of his shaky voice the only thing between a sense of panic and guilt that threatened to overwhelm him - and he just knew he couldn’t leave him like that. Whichever mysterious deity brought him back to Draco’s apartment in the middle of the night - they clearly had a plan.

He checked the condition of the bed and found out with no small amount of surprise that it was the only untouched piece of furniture in the ravaged place. The linen had been torn from it, but the bed itself was massive and most likely too heavy to demolish - or perhaps whoever did this, had simply missed it. In any event, it stood solid and still, all four feet intact and after he had made a quick job of draping it in fresh sheets with a help of a very useful household spell he had picked up from his mother - this is where he placed Draco’s body gently.

Then he went to work. He could have used magic, but for some crazy reason that had to do with paying penance for his behaviour he wanted to do this the old-fashioned way. So he got himself a piece of cloth – Merlin knows there was torn fabric galore! – and began cleaning up the young man as best as he could; cursing his own brutishness quietly and feeling a constant urge to remind himself that he only ever gave the blond what he wanted. Still – he couldn’t help feeling sorry and an unwarranted thought crawled into his mind before he could stop it: _Next time I should be more gentle.._.

And then he forcefully reminded himself that there _would be no next time_ , that this was it, he was only doing this because the blond was hurt and this was a goodbye, good and proper – and he couldn’t help feeling his heart sinking into the darkness he had no explanation for at the thought. Rubbing the chilled long elegant fingers with his big calloused hands to warm them up a little fully brought home how very fragile and almost child-like his once-arch-enemy felt under his touch... and when he gently swept the burning brow with a wet rag to cool him down, he couldn’t keep his eyes off the vulnerable patrician face.

There was something about the pale young man lying so motionless, almost lost in the giant, freshly made bed. Something that drew Ron’s eyes like a moth into the flame onto the pearly alabaster skin, something that made his skin crawl with a feeling of possession when his fingers brushed against the soft curve of the mouth, something sinister that crawled into the centre of his heart and just wouldn’t leave…

“ _Mine!_ ” his heart screamed unrelenting and he couldn’t help thinking that it was. He owned that mouth, goddammit, he owned that man on the bed! He had marked him for his own years ago, the second he kissed him and it was too cruel that he should give him up now... He knew it was childish and stupid, but he couldn’t help it – he felt as if Draco Malfoy belonged to him and all the arguments in his head were invalid. This, on the bed, was his man.

And then the eye-lids fluttered open and the grey eyes were suddenly upon him and they were indeed as unfocused and as feverish as he knew they were going to be. But still – somehow, inexplicably, his lover must have felt his presence, because the cold bony fingers gripped around his hand viciously as if he desperately wanted to keep him by his side and the single ragged word escaped his mouth:

“Ron...”

And the redhead did it without thinking. He leaned over him and kissed him sweetly on the mouth, pouring in all his worry, his uncalled for wild emotion that he couldn’t control and had stubbornly attached itself to him when he thought of Draco Malfoy - and he whispered soothingly:

“Right here. Not going anywhere now. Just rest. We’ll talk later...”

And the anxious look in the blond’s eyes had visibly relaxed and his head slumped to the side. As his heavy eye-lids sunk close once again, his hot feverish breath only asked for one thing:

“Stay…”

And as if he knew how much he was asking of Ron, the fingers of this proper Malfoy never loosened up on any of the desperate strength with which he was holding his lover’s hand, as if he knew what was his and was never giving it up. Ron’s heart might have broken just a little at the sight.

~

When Draco Malfoy opened his eyes for the second time, he inhaled the familiar scent and knew he was in Heaven. He smelled the masculine aphrodisiac mixture of sweat and mint soap on wonderfully hot skin, the silken hair caressing his cheek, and he just knew if he could move the heavy eye-lids, the world would have righted itself and he would see him again. And he had to, he needed to see him, he needed to be sure, so he put all his effort in opening his eyes and when he finally succeeded he was awarded with the most beautiful sight: a worried face of Ron Weasley stared at him from the close proximity, his eyes impossibly deep blue in the faint light of the lone candle illuminating the room.

And Draco just stared; he could have died happy like this, caught in the lustre of those beloved eyes. And he couldn’t afford to lose the vision, just in case this was all this was, so he gripped his hand fiercely and tried to tell him how hopelessly he loved him, how sorry he was for ruining this for them, how very much he needed him and that for god’s sake, he shouldn’t leave again... But nothing much came out of his dry throat, save for a faint whisper of his name – and yet the redhead seemed to have understood anyway.

And _there_ , right there and then, his redheaded god gave him what only he could: solace and peace and hope all wrapped in one. _He kissed him_. And if Draco only had one moment to live, he would have picked this one. The silken lips touched him gently, sharing their warmth, their gentleness, the secret little promise of more if only he got better - and somehow, inexplicably, Draco Malfoy knew that Ron Weasley belonged to him. It was all it that kiss, in that simple touch of sweet mouth that made a silent union. He could allow his heavy eye-lids to close again, he knew his redheaded god wouldn’t let go.

“Stay,” he asked half unaware, already sailing in the misty world of dreams of the warm soft mouth and the man sheltering him by his side. If this was nothing but a dream, he never wanted to wake up.

~

“Shit… Draco…” Ron whispered lost, his heart strangely wild like never before, as if it had only now realized what a precious gift it was given. Could it be that he…? No… no, it couldn’t. Even gods that never favoured him much wouldn’t do that to him, he couldn’t… _feel_ all that for Draco Malfoy. And yet it was undeniably there, that tightness in his chest, that savage overpowering mixture of wanting to posses, to protect and to stay with the beautiful blond creature that crawled into his life uninvited and somehow took over. He couldn’t have that… He couldn’t feel those things, they scared the living shit out of him... and he wouldn’t, he promptly decided.

Not because it was making his life infinitely more complicated, not because this was Draco bloody Malfoy and this was just weird and against the very natural order of things – but because it was making him raw and vulnerable and without any control whatsoever over his crazy messed up heart. He knew he could use some rules and order and some god-given common sense to make things fall back into place from a chaos his once placid life had turned into – but he _could_ deal with the chaos and disarray and cheating and, Merlin knows, he could deal with lying... and yet he couldn’t deal with himself being in such a miserable mental wanting-but-not-knowing-what messed up state only Draco Malfoy could put him in.

With Harry it was all straight-forward and perfect and easy – he loved Harry and that was that. _But the blond Slytherin_ … he just drove him crazy, plain and simple. He made him feel all those things that shouldn't have any space to breathe between them; the blond menace only had to look at him with a hint of unsheathed desire hiding inside those exquisite silver eyes and tilt his patrician head lightly in unspoken invitation and Ron was instantly tense, alert and full to the brim of crazy inexplicable desire to prove himself, prove… _something_ , he didn’t know what.

And that’s why he had to quit this… get as far away as he possibly could from the dangerous addiction that was Draco Malfoy; run and never look back from the poison of excitement and rush of blood to the head, to the crazy pounding of the heart and impossibly fulfilling, exotic sex that brought all of his darkest desires to life and made him feel as if he’s won himself a bloody number one prize every time he heard the debauched blond beauty whisper filth and stutter broken words of love into his mouth and beg him for it. He couldn’t get enough… just _couldn’t_. And it was defying everything that defined him, everything he’s made his life about.

He couldn’t even begin to imagine what his life would be like if he, by some lucid twist of insane fate, would end up by the side of one Draco Malfoy instead of Harry, his Harry. His good and safe and familiar beloved Harry. To trade the peaceful loving family life he held in precious balance for a dive into the deep unknown water by the side of a god of chaos that was Draco Malfoy. It was… _unthinkable_. That’s what it was. Utterly unimaginable. Impossible. A bad thing. _A bad, bad thing_. Many bad things. Pissed off Hermione. Betrayed children. Pissed off and betrayed Harry. _His_ Harry. Harry who had already suffered and sacrificed so much… too much. This was not an option. This was never going to be an option.

He closed his eyes for a moment over this decision and felt the weight of it pour like leaden armour over his heart. He hated himself right now. Strangely tender he leaned down and kissed the boiling brow of his blond lover gently and allowed himself to watch the pretty narrow face for a while longer, saying goodbye. Draco was all that and more when he lay by his side, and even unconscious, the young man was mesmerizing in his serene beauty and to Ron, simply unforgettable. But he _had_   to.

He knew this decision was going to cost him, but he had made it for the second time in one day and his rational brain of a chess-player told him it was the right one. But the stubborn Knight inside of him, always out there to protect his King, still fought it tooth-and-nail - and he did that with a violently beating heart, screaming bloody murder against his chest and the unexpected tears that welled up at the end of his long auburn eyelashes and threatened to break the illusion that he could do this and do it unharmed. He knew it would be a while before the hurt noble creature inside him surrendered, but he felt like he had nothing to give it but time. He had to try and do this.

“I’m sorry,” he told the blond shadow quietly, as if he could hope to be heard. “I’m sorry. I know no other way.”

He knew he had to leave soon before his decision crumbled into dust under a entrancing sight of a vulnerable young man who just wanted to love him, but he knew he couldn’t leave him like that.

Draco was ill and he needed care, that much was obvious. And what he was ill with and who had done something like this to him and his apartment, Ron didn’t know. In the last few years he had learnt how to take care of bruised knees and snotty noses, child diseases and over-night colds that were all but gone in the morning - but this was beyond him, he instantly recognised that. Something in the limp limbs and translucent skin, making the young man seem utterly exhausted told him that much. So… he needed help. But whose help?

Surely none of the Malfoys would thank him if he appeared at St. Mungo’s with an unconscious member of the family in his arms and without a proper explanation on how that came about! He didn’t even dare to _think_ of Harry ever finding out... So there was precious little he could do, really... in fact, he could only think of one thing.

~

He apparated in front of the elegant entrance incorporated into a solid fence, elaborately made from wrought-iron, bearing every mark of the Malfoy family estate. He didn’t even consider apparating within its borders; he knew full-well he would have been badly knocked about - or worse. Ever since the war – and possibly quite prior to it as well – the Malfoy family home was guarded with notorious viciousness from the potentially vengeful crowd and though Harry, as one of the top Aurors, could probably gain access on a whim, Ron had no such credentials.

And he couldn’t very well ask Harry for a favour, could he now – he gathered his chances would still have been better with Draco’s parents than with his insanely jealous lover! Harry’s wrath was just as glorious as everything else about him and if he ever found out... Ron didn’t even want to _think_ about it.

So he rang an ancient looking bell without ever hearing it echo, but he didn’t have to wait long: the remaining house-elf staff of the Malfoys, though considerably diminished in number, was just as diligent after the war than before the Granger-Weasley decree: they might have been paid staff now, but the thing that really kept them on their toes was the holy fear installed into them by their powerful Master. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that a house-elf, who would dare speak out of any kind of abuse under the Malfoy roof, could never be found again to testify in court. Lucius still had some of his old, dark ways.

But the house-elf that appeared in front of Ron this night was dressed up in a clean cloth and though he had a typical jittery servile demeanour of all the house-elves, the redhead knew better than to underestimate him: the house-elves had their own magic, which could in no manner be considered inferior to those of witches and wizards. Therefore he offered his only weapon and smiled warmly, reassuringly into the sleepy wrinkled face, laden with suspicion.

“Blimey,” he said lightly, “I don’t even know if it’s a good time to say “ _Good evening_ ”, or perhaps “ _Good morning_ ”, because this is... uh, awkward. But as it is, I am in dire need of some assistance and I’m afraid this is some sort of emergency...”

With the edge of alertness visibly diminished by the redhead’s friendly demeanour, the house-elf seemed to have relaxed some and offered obligingly:

“Of course, if it is an emergency... what is Mister Visitor’s emergency may I ask? Should he be in need of Master or Mistress of the house, I strongly suggest waiting until morning – they may not be favourably disposed towards answering Mr. Visitor’s emergency…”

“Oh, you needn’t worry about that,” said Ron kindly, with a calming matter-of-fact smile. “You will do just fine.”

And before the shocked house-else could regain his senses about him, the unrelenting grip of the strong fingers was upon him and the redhead disapparated them both.

When they reappeared in the middle of the horribly trashed Draco’s apartment, Ron felt himself flying through the air the second he managed to apparate and there was a livid house-elf with an accusing threatening finger looming above him as soon as his head thumped against the wall.

“Ouch…!” he managed – bloody house elves and their bizarre beastly magic! – and not to lose time looking for lame excuses he pointed with his outstretched hand in the direction of the bed and said through gritted teeth:

“Your young Master. I found him like this. He needs your help.”

And the threatening finger was gone and replaced by ungodly frightened squealing as the tiny creature rushed towards the bed as if a Fiendfyre was behind his heels.

“Young Master!! Oh, poor young Master, who had done this to him?! By the Elder Elf’s ears, he is burning up so…!”

He applied a quick cooling charm to Draco’s feverish brow, impressively set a pot of tea to boiling without ever leaving his position at bed and continued to fuss about his young Master in a million and one ways, adjusting the linen around him and murmuring unintelligible gibberish to himself out of which nothing than “ _poor_ ”, “ _so sad_ ” and “ _dying_ ” could be discerned. Finally accepting there was nothing more to do, he collapsed miserably by the side of his young Master, crossed his overly-long arms on his chest in a silent gesture of desperate impotence, and looked at Ron for the first time since they apparated into the apartment.

“Mister Visitor is Ron Weasley,” he said unexpectedly and Ron thought that, blimey, he really should have known better... “Wheezy knows that, because he is named after him.”

When he saw the flabbergasted look in the blue eyes he gave a thin sad smile and spoke almost educationally: “Right before Wheezy’s pa Dobby left the Malfoy service, young Master overheard him talk about Harry Potter’s Wheezy – and the young Master promptly gave Wheezy here his name and asked Mistress to give him to young Master as a personal service. He always treats Wheezy most nicely, he does! And Wheezy knows young Master’s secrets… many secrets.

He knows young Master keeps all the newspaper clippings of Ron Weasley hidden in his desk… nobody knows, but Wheezy has seen them. And he keeps saying Ron Weasley’s name in his sleep, he does, the poor tortured soul my young Master has become since the war! He hardly eats, almost never sleeps and screams himself awake on most nights. And he had not been home for over a month now, worrying Mistress out of her mind. He does fire-call almost every day to say he is fine – or she would have come over to check on him a time ago, doubt not, she’s been ever so anxious since that blasted war! – but he keeps on repeating stubbornly that they must let him live his life and for the first time in years he seemed so happy and alive, so she was kept at bay – until now. But should she see him in such a state…”

“She shouldn’t,” said Ron quickly. “Not unless we can avoid it. If he stays here - can you help him? If he doesn’t get worse, I mean. Can you? I’m willing to do my part. I will fix this place, I’ve seen worse, and I will come and visit until he’s restored to his strength. But I can’t stay with him, it’s… we’re no good for each other,” he ended miserably. He saw a curious look in the creature’s eyes, but the house-elf knew better than to question a wizard, famous for his temper. Instead he chose to just stare at Ron quietly, in silent anticipation, and sure enough, the redhead was guilt-ridden enough to feel an acute need to make some sense of things for his involuntary assistant.

“We… Draco and I… we’ve been meeting for some time now,” he admitted quietly. “In here. I thought we were both just going for a bit of good fun, but Draco… I… it got complicated and he said a few things last night and… I made a decision to let him go. But when I told him I can’t see him anymore, he went absolutely bonkers and threw me out. Except I… well, it’s not like I had a change of heart, no, my heart is… _just stupid_ … oh, never mind, it’s not important… It was more like I felt I still owed him some sort of explanation and I came here and I found him like this. I didn’t do this, you must believe me,” he looked at him almost pleadingly and received nothing but a stern look in return.

“We shall see,” the house elf nodded solemnly, the suspicion in his large eyes not completely gone.

“Stay perfectly still,” he ordered in a voice suddenly a ring with authority and performed an array of complicated motions with his long wavy hands, his overly-large fingers scribbling elaborate ornaments into the thin air - but though Ron practically held his breath for the result – he could see nothing. But the house elf stared into the air in front of him with his bulging eyes clearly following something… and after a long while his shoulders visibly relaxed, but his large eyes suddenly reflected worry and a mist of sadness.

“Wheezy believes Ron Weasley,” he declared quietly. “He had ruined young Master… but he had not done this.”

And strangely, his words really stung.

“I haven’t…” Ron started… but didn’t know how to go on. “I did _not_ …” he tried again, but the words died on his mouth, because he knew full well what he had done and somehow, impossibly, the house-elf seemed to have known it, too.

“Ron Weasley did,” he said curtly. “He gave young Master what he had wanted most, what he’s been craving for all his life – and then took it away. That is no way to treat young Master. He… he was never meant to be a good man and yet somehow… he is not a bad one. And in Wheezy’s household that is almost a miracle. But he is damaged and Ron Weasley took advantage of that, because he is damaged himself. It makes Wheezy sad to say that this is perhaps _why_ young master loves him. And now Wheezy has to politely ask Ron Weasley to remove himself as he had said it himself: he is no good for young Master.”

The house-elf has tried to hold on to the politeness and composure he felt he owed the wizards, but the cold fury in his voice was unmistakable and inexplicably, he strangely reminded Ron of a livid Severus Snape. He had no more business here, the creature had made that clear, but he knew he could not leave in peace with things left hanging in the air unsaid, wrongly assumed, as they were…

“I care,” he said suddenly, unexpectedly, surprising even himself. “I care about him, you know… I do. So help me god. I don’t know _why_ I do, but it is there and I feel it and its weighing me down and I don’t know what to do with it, with this… _burden_ ,” he finished quietly, sounding as miserable and as confused as he felt. “I stared this… out of vanity, I think… because I’ve never known a feeling more heady than to be wanted the way he wants me… because I’ve always had… _something_ stored inside me that only ever belonged with him. That’s why I started it and that’s god’s honest truth.

But then he clung on to me so desperately, with such force, it completely knocked me over and blew me away. He’s attached himself onto me… my mind, my thoughts, my soul, my heart… - a little bit… perhaps… call it what you like – and I started caring.

He used to be everything I wanted to become in my life: elegant, rich, so bloody stylish and so impossibly gorgeous… and today he’s still all those things, but he’s none of the things I want now… I _should_ want now… and yet somehow… I want him now the way I never wanted him before. He’s all wrong for me and I’m all wrong - _and very, very bad-_ for him and we really shouldn’t… but we did and when we did, it felt stronger than us.

Merlin, you should have felt the force that pulled us together… still pulls us together… I don’t know how to go against it with him around! And that’s why I’m going to leave now,” he looked straight at the house elf with sharp blue eyes and he didn’t even know why it mattered that someone, who knew Draco better than he ever hoped to, understood the difference – but somehow it did. “Not because he… and now you… threw me out. _But because I need to_. Or I’ll make this into a mess Merlin himself could no longer fix.

He needs someone else… someone decent… someone with no baggage, someone he has a future with… someone better. Because after all these years, I’m still rubbish. I’ve accomplished nothing, yet somehow I got this wife that’s worlds too good for me, amazing kids that Godric himself could not have asked for better, a best friend that cares for me beyond anything I ever imagined – and still, I’m a nobody, a scum and I act like one. I hurt everyone I care about, it’s as if it’s the only thing I’m good for – hurting people. And whatever I do, wherever I turn, I’m about to hurt some more.

I said I would come around as often as I could until he’s better and I would. But you need to keep him away from me afterwards - lie, if you must, change wards to this place - and I’ll do my part. If he ever comes after me again, I’ll tell him… no, I’ll _show_ him I don’t care anymore. Because he needs to let go. We… can never be. And I’m sorry I started it in the first place. I’m not sorry for the time I got to spend with him, because it was just… we are… I’ve never experienced something so _intense_ in my life and I doubt I ever will… and because he _is_ rather wonderful once you get to know him… but I shouldn’t have. I only meant to mend some things, but now it’s going to hurt even more and I must stop it while I still can.”

Somewhere during his speech the house-elf’s eyes softened a little and now he was staring at him with nothing but pity.

“Ron Weasley should know it’s all in vain,” he informed him quietly. “A Malfoy never lets go of what was once his… and he had owned Ron Weasley now, if only for a while. Ron Weasley has yet to learn what it means to be owned by a Malfoy. Besides if two people were meant to be…”

“We weren’t meant to be!” interrupted Ron roughly, suddenly more on edge and agitated than during this whole murder of the night. “We weren’t! We’re terrible together! We would be, anyway, after a while. And the whole idea is preposterous! A Malfoy and a Weasley… _mother of god_ , my dad and his father could share a room at St. Mungo’s if that ever came about! Merlin... I...”

He ran his nervous long fingers through the silken fiery hair and his eyes burned electric blue with the inexplicable fire against the pale freckled skin. He face showed signs of the internal conflict he was losing his composure over and one could clearly read the pity on the house-elf’s face as he watched the young man trying to gain an upper hand in a battle he couldn’t hope to win.

“ _Too late_ ,” he could have told the young wizard. “ _You belong already. You belong with him now._ ”

But he knew he could never hope to get through a proverbially thick Weasley skull, so he chose to remain impassive when Ron crossed his arms on his chest and closed his restless eyes, hoping against hope for some resolve and some badly needed focus.

“Enough,” the redhead said to himself quietly. “Enough for now... I really need go now, it’s almost dawn and my family won’t sleep forever. I will be back as soon as I can, just like I promised. Just… keep the wards unchanged and be here for him. And...”

His eyes fell to the ground as he said this, but it appeared as if he had made his decision: “And promise you’ll take good care of him and if it gets worse – make sure he gets help, yeah?” he looked the house-elf straight in the face with blue eyes as deep as the sea to make a point. “I don’t care if you need to tell them what happened - though, obviously, I’d much rather you wouldn’t - but if he needs help, you better make sure he gets it. And I need you to let me know that he’s OK. Wait, I’ll...”

Swiftly, as if he didn’t want to think about it much, he moved towards the motionless body of the young man still lying on the bed still as a marble statue, the shallow breathing the only tell-tale sign he was not, indeed, cast in stone. He stared at him for a long moment, then bent down unexpectedly and pressed a soft lingering kiss on his brow only to have the blond man’s breath hitch and his lips move as if he tried to say something, but couldn’t muster enough strength.

Then the adept long fingers sunk into a sea of fiery hair and Ron Weasley unclasped the thin silver necklace from the nape of his own neck. He brushed the pendant, a silver lion, absent-mindedly with his long fingers as if he was trying to evoke the powers within it and then proceeded to press a small kiss onto it, whispering a spell that made it glow for a brief moment – and he finally secured it behind Draco’s neck. He then straightened the chain carefully and meticulously made sure the pendant lay straight above his heart while his fingers brushed against the pale burning chest in a final goodbye.

“For hope. For good grace…” his lips moved almost invisibly, but the whisper betrayed them. There was a whole Universe of unspoken feelings in the dark of his blue eyes as he continued to stare down his lover's face as if he wanted to make sure he would always remember it.

“There,” he finally said softly, just a shade above the whisper. “All I can do for now. It has a protective spell on it and a summoning charm. If you need me, of if he does, hold it in the palm of your hand and say my full name. I will know and I will come as soon as I can. But it is for emergencies only and I must get it back when he’s better. It’s a gift charged with power and magic, given to me by a powerful man and it already granted me a wish I never thought possible – though I’m paying for it now. If he kept it for too long, it could be trouble for both of us. He shouldn’t even know he had it on him, if all goes well. I will collect it as soon as he starts regaining his health. But for now – it is his. I… never wanted to hurt him…”

He looked at the house-elf with stormy eyes, clearly etched with misery, and repeated stubbornly:

“It was never my intention to hurt him. And he cannot know I was ever here when he gets better. It will all fall apart if I have to do this again, I don’t have it in me to keep on hurting him. But I still need to know that he’s going to be alright. Will you let me know, even after he’s better?”

And the house-elf just gave the tiniest of nods and said quietly:

“Wheezy will use the necklace if it is an emergency, otherwise he will send one owl every day until young Master is fit to attend Hogwarts again. Always the same owl, Cassiopeia, grey with yellow eyes, young Master’s favourite one, unless she is otherwise occupied. Not to keep Ron Weasley away, that can’t be done. But because Ron Weasley says he cares.”

And Ron, suddenly bone-tired and with no energy left to argue, just waved his hand in a gesture of gratitude and hoped the little creature understood it the way it was made. He was just about to close his eyes to focus on disapparation, when a thought that was stuck behind the wall of his tired anxious brain ever since he returned here jumped at him unexpected:

“Wheezy – who’s done this to Draco? I know it wasn’t me, but I should very much like to know who it was and…”

“It was young Master himself,” the house-elf interrupted him in a sad heavy voice and saw Ron’s eyes grow wide and impossibly blue in recognition. “The Masters never express their feelings much,” he said quietly. “They like to leave the impression they have none, but Wheezy knows better. And Ron Weasley has left the young Master with a lot of feelings to hide and it only took little for the dam to break. He was always so sensitive, Wheezy’s young Master, though he was always trying so bravely to mask it and act cold and cruel like the Master expected of him. And eventually he learned to put on a persuasive façade of haughtiness and disdain and that saved his life during that blasted war – but there was never really much behind that front, no real malice, no proper cruelty beyond the spoilt child’s games, nothing much... but _fear_.

Lots of fear. Fear of his father, then fear of the Dark Lord and his vicious lackeys, fear of losing his mother, his childhood home, his freedom and his life; the fear of letting his parents down, fear of living his life in vain and alone… Young Master suffered much during the war,” the house elf said almost in a whisper, as if he was mourning.

“And when it was over, he was left hollow, his peace of mind never fully restored, his prospects bleak and his life empty. Master insisted that he earned himself a proper formal education so he could improve his future, but young Master only ever agreed to it to fill up his aimless days. Perhaps Wheezy is wrong, but this is where Ron Weasley came along, yes?”

He stared at Ron with his big bulging questioning eyes and when the redhead gave a tiny nod, Wheezy gave a heavy sigh.

“It is like Wheezy thought, then. It is small wonder this has turned out this way, young Master did always have most impossible crush on Ron Weasley… though he would no doubt furiously deny such a thing if questioned, but Wheezy knows. And Wheezy has seen what had happened in this room today through his magic... the _whole_ of it,” he looked at Ron pointedly and it made the redhead roll up his eyes and mumble “ _Bloody hell...”,_ feeling himself  blush violently. But the creature merely gave a thin tired smile and continued almost solemnly:

“Wheezy saw that young Master was made a very happy man, happiest Wheezy had ever seen him. So much magic and warmth and light and... affection flooded this place, no wonder young Master was easily drunk with such wonderful heady emotions... And then he had said those words from the bottom of his heart to Ron Weasley only to have it all ruined in an instant. Ron Weasley tried to take it all away from him and it shattered the young Master to see his illusion of a different life, filled with love and purpose, vanish into thin air... Can Ron Weasley, Sir, still find it impossible that the devastation the young Master felt inside burst to the surface so violently?

Ron Weasley had given my young Master everything he ever hoped for and suddenly he was gone, never to come back - and he had left him with nothing. And it was not the same nothing as before. Now my young Master knew it was there, he knew _exactly_ what he had lost and it had made him very poor and feverish and he had temporarily lost his grip on sanity that was very fragile and loose to begin with since that blasted war... He sunk into that gapping black void completely and wished to drown… Wheezy's poor young Master...”

The creature looked ready to cry at these words and he quickly cleaned his long nose in a rag that served as his only piece of clothing. But he recovered rather quickly and pointed at the redhead with his long accusing finger:

“It was a foul thing to do, a foul, _foul_ thing to do!” he looked at Ron darkly and the redhead was suddenly so hurt and ashamed he couldn’t even look at him, his eyes dancing around the edges of his boots and he felt his face burn in all shades of red at the sudden rush of blood to the head.

“But young Master would order Wheezy punish himself for these words,” the house-elf’s  voice broke through his miserable brooding and the redhead finally found enough courage in him to meet his eyes. “Young Master would never allow the one he loves to be chastised for his faults, he loves him the way he comes, faults in tow,” the creature said simply and Ron thought that this, perhaps, was the very thing that pulled him towards the blond so: he was good enough the way he was.

A cheating, lying, average - just one of the many Weasley sons; underachiever, the Saviour’s side-kick, the strange quirk in the brilliant judgement of the brightest witch of her generation - just a nobody on his own, someone who was destined to be a loser should he not happen to be in the right place at the right time... And still he was good enough for one Draco Malfoy, the last heir of the pureblood houses of Malfoy and Black, the enormously rich and stylish and cultivated and bloody _gorgeous_ young man who could have had his pick, anyone he bloody well wanted, and yet - he chose him... And made him feel like he was a million galleons worth. 

And he was throwing it all away and right now he really didn’t want to talk about it, because it just stung too damn much and he had no good explanation how on Merlin’s bloody earth had he landed himself in such a wretched position and managed to drag someone else with him... He couldn’t even _think_ about it any longer, his head was bursting with tender passionate memories of the silver eyes immersed into his in reverence, of the soft mouth delivering sweet intoxicating kisses and whispered words of love... of the pale motionless figure looking every bit abandoned in the big heavy bed that his lucid mind gave the appearance of a coffin....

He knew he wasn’t thinking straight, but his eyes were suddenly stinging with tears and he needed to go really badly lest he make even more of a fool of himself.

“Just... I need to… fuck...” he whispered and disapparated before he changed his mind again.

And when he apparated with a soft pop straight into his living room, the last remains of the fire in the fireplace still keeping the place cosily warm and welcoming, he covered his face with the big palms of his hands and just wished he could sink into the darkness. But it was not meant to be.

“ _Where. The fuck. Were you_?!” came a livid hiss behind his back and he only managed a desperate thought “ _Oh, no... bloody hell, not now..._ ” before he was spun around roughly and he stared straight into the green jewels of his best mate’s eyes. And a pissed off Harry Potter with a jealous gleam in his brilliant eyes was a terrifying sight.

“ _Where were you, Ron?!_ ” he hissed again and the redhead thought miserably that by Godric’s holy long johns, he really didn’t know what to tell him.


	37. Caught between

_"They can keep me out_  
 _'Til I tear the walls_  
 _'Til I save your heart_  
 _And to take your soul..."_  
Seven devils, Florence and the Machines

 

As Ron stared down the legendary green eyes ablaze, desperate, with his exhausted brain empty and unwilling to come up with a single convincing excuse, Harry raged on as if his gut instinct was telling him that something was wrong – and it had something to do with him.

“I'll ask you again, Ron: where the hell were you!? I've been waiting for ages, I tried fire-calling and no one responded; the Floo is disconnected and the house is guarded like a bloody fortress - and in the end I had to let myself in the Muggle way, with a bloody key! I've been waiting for you forever – _Where the hell do you have to be in the middle of the bloody night!?”_ he nearly screamed and the redhead thought desperately that, fuck it, he really needed to give him something or he would have burst a vein anytime soon, so he just opened his mouth and let out the first thing on his mind in a flat tired voice:

“With Draco Malfoy.”

Even as the words fled his mouth he couldn’t believe he had actually blurted them out. Well done, stupid fucked up fried brain of his! Well, if anything - at least the unfortunate words had successfully shut up Harry, who was currently staring at him with his mouth gapping as if he couldn’t believe his ears and he was waiting for someone to wake him up.

“ _You_... were with _Draco Malfoy_?!” he repeated his words as if he couldn’t understand them, as if he was sure there was some hidden meaning hiding underneath but it was beyond his comprehension. “All this time, when I was waiting here like an idiot - waiting for _ages_ , Ron! – you were with Draco Malfoy?! Is that what you’re telling me?! What _are_ you telling me, exactly?!” Harry was practically shouting now and it was enough to rattle Ron, who hasn’t felt so exhausted and on edge since the bloody Horcrux hunt.

“Shut it, Potter, you’ll wake the kids!” he barked in a raised, irritated voice and was sorry the second he saw the hurt look on his best mate’s face. “Oh, bloody hell...” he mumbled and didn’t think twice before he pulled the raven-haired youth into his bear-like hug. And strangely, wrapping his arms around Harry relaxed him and somehow made him feel all better when he felt the lithe figure invade his personal space and press deeply into his body.

“Look... I’m sorry, OK? It’s just that I’m exhausted and I can’t seem to open my bloody mouth lately without hurting someone. I... couldn’t sleep and I went out to get some air and I found him and... he’s ill or something, he needed help, so I got him some help, their house-elf and...”

He was lying through his teeth now and he knew it; adjusting the truth, re-directing attention, manipulating Harry’s feelings for him – anything, any bloody thing to put his Harry, his jealousy and his suspicions to peace. He desperately needed him thinking about something else, because - as shaken as he was this night - he couldn’t be certain into his ability to play a tricky game of hide-and-seek much longer. Not tonight. Not after he had spent the whole night thinking about another man and his restless, careless thoughts still kept escaping into his direction like naughty children that wouldn’t listen to reason.

But it seemed as if his lies, sounding shaky and every bit transparent to him, were enough for Harry; it was as if the smitten young man was hoping for an excuse, clinging onto every Ron’s word to find a reasonable explanation and the redhead could feel his wiry arms wrap around his waist frantically as his best mate leaned his head onto his chest and closed his eyes.

“I knew it…” Harry whispered and Ron could feel how very tense he was in his arms. “Merlin be thanked, I knew there has to be a good explanation! I knew you wouldn’t do this to me, betray me and… God, Ron, for a moment there when you said you were with Malfoy I thought I’ve lost you and… I swear I saw black for a second. I can’t lose you, I can’t ever lose you… oh, yesssss… Ron, please…”

The tall redhead guessed what would be the best remedy for his best mate’s fears and he had no reservations giving it to him: he shut his frantic whisper with his soft obedient mouth and Harry melted into him. This was _better_ … he could deal with it like this, through genuine affection he felt for his green-eyed lover, he felt terrible lying to him openly. When he just wasn’t telling him things… he could somehow manage it, but blatant lying… he wasn’t made to lie to Harry, his Harry, he loved the man too much for that. God, was he ever so messed up and confused…

How could he love a man, clearly, undoubtedly, enough to give his life for him… and yet think of another, lying abandoned in his large bed and wanting nothing else but to join him and wrap himself around him and tell him it was going to be alright!? Bloody hell, what a fucked up mess! Harry was everything he ever wanted, he was making him happy, he made him feel loved and wanted and he made him hard… even now, when his mind was a total chaos, he could feel his insides coiling under his skin as Harry’s silken hot tongue brushed against his and he moaned quietly into his mouth… Why couldn’t that be enough!? 

“Harry…” he tried to pull away and bring some sense between them while he didn’t get too lost himself – after all, his wife was just a wall away and she had to wake up eventually! – but the raven-haired youth wouldn’t have any of it.

“Need you…” he whispered, sounding hungry and desperate and determined to get what he came here for. “Please, Ron… it’s just a kiss… please…”

And the redhead surrendered like he always did when Harry asked it of him. “Just a kiss, then…” he whispered softly and gave him some more, throwing caution to the wind. He loved kissing Harry, slowly, sensually, making the two slick silken tongues dance together in a delicately balanced game of give and take, knowing how very undone he could make him with his mouth - but it wasn’t until he felt his warm fingers sink into his hair and close on his neck that he realized this was a road with no return. Harry never meant to end this, it was as if he simply didn’t care anymore. And with all the loose ends in the air, Ron really couldn’t have that.

“Harry,” he called gently one more time, not completely giving up his gentle ministrations. “Did something happen, love? Why are you here? It’s barely morning…”

“Had a fight…” the young man managed into his mouth as if it didn’t matter at all and only when he felt his redheaded lover break a kiss and stare at him incredulously, he gave a deep sigh and leaned his head onto Ron’s chest and confessed: “I had a fight with Ginny. She’s unhappy about… well, _us_. She says I see enough of you at Hogwarts and wants to go back to having weekends for ourselves – you know, go places and be on our own, while it’s still only the two of us, and it’s impossible at the Burrow with all the people always running around. And since she can’t very well ask _you_ to stay away, she thought it was a good idea to go pester me about it…”

“Oh, Harry, mate… what a bloody mess,” murmured Ron, who could for once completely sympathise with his sister – and his lover. “So what did you tell her?”

“I told her, I won't have anyone tell me who to spend my time with,” Harry said stubbornly. “I told her I come home to her every evening, which I do - though I might as well choose to stay somewhere closer, long distance apparations aren’t exactly a piece of cake – and I told her I don’t get to see that much of you between the classes and that I don’t get to see much of you, period. And then she completely freaked out, started yelling that I don’t ever complain about not seeing Hermione enough, it’s just _you_ , only you, it’s forever going to be _you_... and so on and so forth until I thought my head was going to burst. Right mental, that one, especially since she’s been pregnant... God, Ron... I know she’s your sister, but sometimes I just... I’m not sure I even _like_ her. She used to be such fun and sweet and loving... and now she’s just this... _harpy_.”

Harry looked at him miserably and Ron knew exactly what this was – he’s been through the same twice already. He looked at his best mate, a mixture of sympathy and reprimand, and tousled his hair lovingly:

“Oh, Harry, love... it’s just the pregnancy hormones messing with her. I know Hermione had me leaving the house in a rush a couple of times, hexes hitting at my heels for far less than that... that woman sure craved her triple-chocolate ice-cream... But you shouldn’t... that’s no way to treat a pregnant woman, baby... She probably just wanted your affection, your reassurance that you love her above anyone and enough to do anything for her, you should have hugged her and promised her anything she wanted to hear, this is the mother of your child we’re talking about, you don’t want to upset her, it’s not good for the baby, silly...”

He kissed the top of his head to take the edge off his words, but there was something about Harry this morning, almost as if he could smell that something was off, something that wouldn’t let him give into Ron completely. His body tensed and he looked his red-headed lover straight in his face:

“I don’t enjoy lying to her,” he said through gritted teeth, anger flaring so unexpectedly it made Ron’s skin prickle at the sudden feeling of danger. “Perhaps _you_ don’t mind it, perhaps it wasn’t lying in your case, not at the time, but there’s just one person I love above anyone and I think she knows... she knows it’s not her, Ron.”

When he saw the flabbergasted expression on his face he continued hastily to explain himself before the temperamental redhead jumped to all the wrong conclusions:

“I swear I never told her, I never said any such thing that would led her to believe differently... but you must understand... it’s getting harder not to and... everything inside me just roars to life and screams to defy the very suggestion that I should let you go! Merlin knows that I’ve wasted enough time yearning for you from afar and it’s hard to tell my stupid heart that after all these years, when I finally know you feel the same, we still cannot be together. _Because I want to._ God help me, I know I shouldn’t, but I want to.

You told me you won’t leave your kids. I... understand... but I struggle. I can’t stop my heart from craving you, Ron, your presence, your time... I can’t stop thinking about you when I’m not with you, wondering what you are up to, daydreaming how it would be to wake up with you, everyday... god, you have no idea how badly I want it... I keep on thinking we have so much lost time to make up for and so little time together to do it… Goddammit, I know it’s wrong, but… I’m jealous of every moment you spend away from me and when she suggested there should be more times like that... I guess I just lost it. I know she wasn’t looking for confrontation, not really, I know I should have reacted differently... but I couldn’t. It just crashed out of me, that fear, that I might see you even less, lose you some more. I can’t handle it, I’m sorry... I can’t.”

“Oh, Harry... you bloody fool...” Ron mumbled, pulling him onto his chest and holding on for dear life, cause he felt how badly his miserable best-mate needed it. “You’ll never lose me, how could you... How could you even think that? It’s... I... dammit... I wish I was better at this... babe, you know I was yours before I was anyone else’s, even before I knew it, before I knew what it was I felt for you – I’ll always be here for you... And even if you don’t see each other every day and we can’t wake up together – you know I’ll always be there when you need me, don’t you? Like your magic – you don’t have to use it all the time, but you know it’s always there for you when you need it, right? Oh, baby, c’mere...”

And Harry launched himself at him, once again with no fear or repercussion, completely oblivious to the fact that anyone, Hermione, or any of the kids, might come in any moment and see him drinking sweet juices of love and life straight out of the mouth of his best mate. He didn’t care and deep down inside Ron knew he wanted them to get caught. If nothing else, he wanted the feeling that Ron was putting it all on the line for him. And the redhead knew he was playing a dangerous game when he let him ravage his mouth some more until the unabashed passion they shared got him moaning quietly and begging:

“Please... Ron... we need to.... I need to... need to feel you... need to have you... to own you... god, Ron, you have no idea what you do to me...”

“Tonight...” the redhead promised him feverishly. “Tonight. I’ll find us a way. Just... not now. I can’t do that... not here. She’ll be up any minute and I owe her that much... some respect, some semblance of normality... please, Harry... calm down, love. Tonight, I promise, tonight, alright?”

“Tonight...” the passionate raven-haired youth managed between two kisses. “God… man… Ron, love… I don’t know how I’ll survive...”

“It’s just a few hours... just a few short hours, yeah?” Ron somehow managed to tune down the crazed pace of kissing Harry had set for them and slowed it down to a few longer luxurious kisses that slowly dissolved.

His best mate then leaned his head back onto his chest and closed his eyes. And watching a fan of jet-black eyelashes cast a shadow down the pale cheek always awoke a strange kind of tenderness in Ron. Towering over him, holding his lithe wiry body next to him, watching him close his eyes in a gesture of absolute trust - this was when Ron felt most protective of his Harry.

“Do you ever think... what if we don’t end up together, Ron?” Harry spoke quietly, strange misery etched into his voice. “It’s my worst nightmare... not to be with you in the end. Eleven years - or more – still to go… anything can happen… Look at my parents, one day they were happy, married, with a baby, living a dream – and the next it was all gone... Life is strange.”

And Ron had no answer to that. He should have, he should have been able to put all of Harry’s anxieties to peace by promising him the moon and the sky, but somehow the words wouldn’t come. And what scared him the most was, why they wouldn’t. Because suddenly, inexplicably, Ron’s life was not only about Harry anymore. Grey eyes, accusing and tender all in one, flashed before him, soft lips mouthing the dooming words “ _I'm in love you…_ _You.Kissed.Me… You showed me_ … _this_ ”, stubbornly, even though they had no business to... And he shivered at the very thought how very betrayed Harry would feel if he should ever know what he was thinking and who he was thinking about.

Perhaps he had left Harry without an answer just a second too long, or had the hopelessly in love young man developed some sort of instinct – before Ron knew it, he found himself starting into the green eyes, alert and deceptively calm, much like the sea before the storm, and Harry asked him in a quiet voice, barely hiding the edge:

“What’s the name of Malfoy’s house-elf, Ron?”

And later the redhead thought this was the moment he should have told him – open up his mouth and his heart and pour out his guilt to Harry and perhaps save himself, save what was left of his decency and his unblemished simple love – but he did not do it. He looked at Harry with a slight frown on his face as if he was wondering where this question came from and answered almost matter-of-factly:

“Well, funny you should ask that – but he seems to be called Wheezy. I couldn’t really get into a conversation with him, Malfoy being very unconscious and all - and you know how fussy the house-elves get when their Masters are concerned – but he seems... different than the rest of the lot... somehow more well-spoken and self-assured, as if he had never been treated really badly.... I could be wrong, but something he said got me thinking Dobby might have been his father. That would surely explain the name...”

“House-elves don’t name their children, Ron, at least they didn’t use to before Hermione’s decree - their masters do that,” Harry said calmly, but still watching his face intently. “It’s all in your wife’s brochure on the new policy regarding the terms of their employment. As it is the law, the Auror’s had to learn it virtually by heart. Which brings me to the questions: why would Draco Malfoy, or anyone from that household, call their house-elf with a name that was only ever used for one person: you. Any ideas?”

As light and conversational as Harry’s tone of voice was, his eyes were as sharp as a glass and he stared straight at Ron, as if he was going to pry the truth out of him one way or another. The redhead found it very hard to hold onto his composure – and all of the sudden he thought defiantly, fuck it, he didn’t have to – attack always was and will be the best form of defence.

“Well, I wouldn’t know that, would I!?” the irritated words finally burst out of him, the flare of his anger so unexpected that Harry literally moved away as if he was slapped when the hot red emotion hit him square in the chest. “Perhaps Malfoy thought it was an excellent joke to name his servant after me, you know how he always used to look down on me and treat me as if I was not worthy of cleaning his shoes. I bet he got kick out of that, calling a servant by my name, it makes perfect sense.

But before this little interrogation goes any further,  _Auror Potter_...” he looked at him pointedly, darkly and still fuming, and saw his shoulders visibly slump “... you can’t treat me like that, Harry! You can’t doubt me, doubt every word I say, put every unplanned, unforeseen action of mine under suspicion. I’m not one of your criminals, you know, and even if I met Draco Malfoy in the broad daylight and asked him for a drink – which will never happen and you know that as well as I do – you can’t try to take away my right to act as I see fit, you know! 

I swear, man, sometimes you make me feel as if I’m this incompetent insecure 17-year-old who needs to be told what he can and cannot do at all times, all over again! I’m my own man, Harry,” he looked him straight in the face, for once not trying to deceive. “I’m a man who chose to love you out of his own free will – don’t you go killing that about me,” he warned him softly and had him literally collapse around his neck.

“I’m sorry, Ron, I’m sorry... fuck... shit, I’m bad at this... give me a world and I’ll save it, give me the world’s best relationship and I’ll fuck it up, guaranteed,” Harry whispered in his ear frantically, showering whatever piece of skin he could find with desperate, apologetic kisses. “Please forgive me, baby... I _never_ should have... I never _would_ have... it’s just that I’m so completely head over heels about you and so afraid to lose you and this crazy mind of mine just _projects_ all those... impossible cruel scenarios what you could get up to when you’re not with me and... I can’t help myself. Please, don’t be mad at me, I’m just... you know how obsessed I get...”

“Shut up, Potter,” Ron mumbled and tried to swallow a pang of guilt that got stuck somewhere in the way between his mouth, desperate to get out in a confession, and his heart, that screamed something at him he stubbornly _would_ _not_ understand. “You’ve got me to save you, don’t you...” he told him, just to say something, to tell him… and show him that he cared, because he knew he could never find the right words for it in the confusion that reigned inside him.

But he knew Harry would understand one language, the language their young needy bodies spoke very well and he knew that was the clearest way to get his point across.

“I’ll heal you of that unsavoury jealousy yet..." he told him with darkened dangerous eyes and by taking control he gave Harry exactly what he wanted, the feeling that his need echoed with the same force inside his fiery redheaded lover. "Potter, you fucking spoilt, fucking greedy man... you just want it all, don't you... you just want to know  _all the time,_ how crazy you drive me... how hard you can get me in 3 seconds flat... How about we try a new approach tonight, beautiful... I bet I can make you feel like _all_ other men should be jealous of you…”

He sought out Harry’s lips deliberately, to shut down his own impossible untameable thoughts, to tell him without words that he’s been forgiven; he went at that plush soft mouth that waited for him eager hungry moans playfully, temptingly, with a purpose to seduce, but that lovely sweet honey-trap of Harry's mouth was always Ron's poison and before he knew it, he got lost in the mind-boggling sensation himself. He couldn't let go, he wasn’t ready to. He remembered why he loved kissing Harry, why he loved giving it to him, making him fall apart under the wet sloppy tongue, painting his passion with slow heavenly strokes inside his mouth, brush by brush, until the passionate young man cursed and moaned uncontrollably, wild with desire and begged him for it. It made him feel in charge, it made him feel primal and manly and equal. It was the only time he felt like this next to Harry. When they made love and Harry let him lead the game, Ron finally felt as if he was good enough. The feeling was intoxicating.

“Mother of god, man… we shouldn’t…” he tried, but couldn’t stop the heat from spreading like a treacherous plague down his body.

“God… yes…. please… now, Ron… oh, god, baby, no more teasing… oh, please, don’t stop…”

Harry Potter has lost it, positively moaning his defeat into the beloved torturous mouth as the fiery redhead pressed him brutally into the wall with no reservations and simply slid into his place beside him, on top of him, rolling his muscled perfect body against him in a way that it was making him see stars and made his legs turn to jelly…

And after that the Ron might have gotten lost a little. The fire-river of need and love surged down his veins with force in one massive wave of arousal as he closed his eyes and let his mind surrender to a pursuit of fantasy… and he heard himself whisper frantically:

“Just a taste of it… for later… my beautiful…”

And his whole body froze. Because the next words on his tongue were “…blond god…” – and he had barely managed to stop them. Behind his closed eyelids, unsuspecting, unaware, he had been chasing an image of a slender blond youth, debauched in his ravenous pale beauty and it had almost stopped his heart when he realized who he’d been thinking of. _Really_   thinking of. His eyes popped open in shock as if he urgently needed a reality-check and he found himself staring down Harry’s pretty face, eyes closed in ecstasy – but the beloved familiar features held no hint of _him_ , no matter how insanely he looked for it. _Mother of god, what was happening to him?! He was so alive in his head, just now…_

What saved him in the end, his sanity and his precarious game of keeping secrets, inexplicably yet not unexpectedly came in the sudden echo of his wife’s voice.

“Ron, love… where are you? Are you up already?”

Hermione’s voice – not too loud to keep the kids from waking - approaching down the corridor cut between them like a hot knife and with the last bit of strength left in him Ron pushed Harry away, just at the arm’s length, just enough to put some distance between them. Panting and flushed as he was, with Harry biting his lip bloody and looking at him with such a starved hard look on his face, he knew he wouldn’t be able to fool a blind man, let alone his astute wife, as to what they were up to just moments before – but even though she knew, she must have, he had told her himself, didn’t he?! - he was not willing to humiliate her by openly snogging his lover in her presence. _That_ much decency he still had left. Besides – he knew she still loved him, quite irrationally so, and an irrational jealous Hermione Granger Weasley was definitely _not_ the kind of person you wanted to confront first thing in the morning.

“Oh, there you are! What are you doing up so early, darling, that’s hardly your style… oh… Harry…”

She finally noticed her other best friend standing just behind Ron, his arm flipped casually, yet possessively across Ron’s back and fingers holding him closely, solidly, just above his hip. It was the ultimate display of power and possession – only someone who knew Ron intimately would know just how very sensitive the patch of skin between his hip and his ribs was and how sensual he found it when  someone caressed it. And now Harry’s  fingers rested there as if he owned the man, that gorgeous treacherous man who was still very much her husband and what really ground her gear and almost took her breath away in a pang of pain: Ron just let him. And _that_ flared her anger unexpectedly. She had to do something, she couldn’t just bloody well stand there and _allow_ herself to be robbed of her own man in her own territory!

“What kind of an emergency is it, then?!” she asked, sharper than she intended and not even bothering to hide irritation. “It’s barely dawn, that’s not just a regular visit, I assume – is there something the matter with Ginny, then?”

The guilty look that Harry shot Ron told her, that, in fact, his presence here might have something to do with Ginny, though not quite in the way her words were aiming at - but the look Harry paid _her_ , was strangely defiant and almost savage:

“We had a fight,” he blurted out with no reservations and only when Ron shot him a warning look, he added quickly. “Nothing important, just… it’s her hormones messing with her again and she’s been… difficult, so I left before I could say something I would come to regret and I had no where else to go, really, so I thought I’d crash on your couch here, just until morning, until her anger subsides a little… you know how she gets… all screamy and… well, she’s been particularly irrational lately…”

“Men,” Hermione sighed and shook her head in disbelief, irritation and self-righteous anger. “Did it perhaps occur to you, _Harry, dear_ , that it is not a particularly _sane_ idea to leave a heavily pregnant woman all by herself in a state of distress?! After she’s had a fight with the one man that should love and support her?! Holy Mary and Rowena, and to think I called Ron thick!”

As she continued to scold him, the anger in her voice was unfeigned, though perhaps the true reason for it had little to do with the actual content of her words. She pressed her fists into her waist, the way she saw her mother-in-law do and it qualified as a particularly intimidating technique.

“Honestly, Harry, I don’t mind having you over for breakfast any other day of the week, but this time I believe it’s only prudent you should go back and check on your _pregnant_   wife! Just think – would you _ever_ be able to forgive yourself if something was to happen to her?! Poor Ginny!”

Everything in his posture was defiant as he realized she was effectively throwing him out and he already opened his mouth to give her a rude reply, when Ron unexpectedly hugged him across the shoulders and said with a smile that was too casual not to be faked:

“You know what, mate, I’ll side with my wife this once, you know it as well as I do that Hermione has a point. You know Ginny, her anger has surely deflated some by now and knowing her, she’s probably sorry and has no one to make up with.”

At the sight of hurt and disappointment on Harry’s face he messed up his hair affectionately and spoke in a softer voice:

“You can’t very well go through the whole day at odds with your pregnant wife, can you? Go check on her before the classes start and you can tell me all about in the evening by a round of pint – my treat, yeah? Merlin knows I’m going to need it after a double class of Flitwick’s Charms – I spend half a time straining my neck to see what he’s doing down there on the floor only to be picked for demonstration every bloody time as if I’m some sort of an exotic animal to be tested, just because I’m older than the rest! _Age discrimination_ , that’s what it is,” he complained grumpily and only because Harry knew that it actually made Ron rather smug to be able to perform every single one of the charms better than most, he allowed his mouth to stretch into a tired smile.

And then it hit him that Ron had just promised him a few hours in his company - and he would make sure they weren’t going to spend them sitting in a pub! – and at that point his smile turned genuine and he nodded his agreement with far more enthusiasm than he actually felt:

“I suppose you’re right, as always. I might have been a bit… rash. I’ll go home then and do my best to make up with Gin. I guess I was just too tired to deal with it, I’ve been checking assignments half of the night and the pile of scrolls was as high as Hagrid. I might go and kip a bit, I’m knackered and I don’t have to come in until afternoon today. A pint it is, then?” he tried his best to sound casual, but the pleading look he paid Ron spoke loud and clear of why he yielded in the first place.

“Sure enough, meet you at the Broomsticks, when we’re done,” the redhead nodded reassuringly and Harry seemed uplifted enough to approach a none-too-cheerful looking Hermione boldly and casually, as if nothing was boiling under the surface, kissed her on the cheek:

“You were right as always, Hermione, I best be on my way...”

And before she could reply, his eyes were already back on Ron as if he wanted to make sure he soaked up some of his lovely image for the day in front of him and with a pointed _“Don’t forget, your treat…”_ he was gone.

Ron exhaled as calmly as he could to let the tension out slowly, but before he could catch his breath, his wife was already upon him, and the way she hissed at him, would have made a Malfoy proud:

“I won’t have that, Ron, is that clear?”

And after a faint _“What the hell are you on about?”_ her anger exploded with full force:

“Stop playing dumb, Ronald Weasley! You know very well “ _what I’m on about_ ”, as you so eloquently put it! I won’t have secret meetings under my very nose, do you hear me!? You two will do well to keep your insatiable appetites to yourself and out of my home! For Merlin’s sake, Ron, I thought you had more decency that that! I understand what you two are, you were quite clear enough about that, thank you very much, but don’t you _dare_ make our home your love nest, you bastard! I will have none of it! Imagine one of our children walked in on you, doing… _godknowswhat_!”

The very thought was enough to make her voice break in hysterics and Ron just closed his eyes in despair and thought _“Bloody hell, if I had one last day on Earth and this was it, fuck it, just bring in the undertaker!”_ , but before he could come up with a proper reply, a none too subtle pop of apparation broke the thick atmosphere of the room and a sheet-pale Harry Potter appeared in their midst.

“You need to help me! It’s Ginny… she’s just lying there, screaming and there’s blood all over the place…”

And before either of his shell-shocked friends could react he was gone with another loud “ _crack!_ ” and Ron felt all his strength run into the floor. Sickness, shame and guilt washed all over him like a fucking tsunami, when he realized that _none of them_ , Hermione included, never actually _thought_ about his abandoned, pregnant sister, not really, not with genuine concern. They were all so wrapped-up in their mind-games of keeping their strained relationships in the precious balance that none of them considered even in the slightest that something, anything could _actually_ go wrong with Ginny, his baby sister he was always so protective of…

“Bloody hell…” he whispered, for a moment completely lost, but suddenly felt a cool, reassuring hand of his wife on his shoulder, and when he opened his eyes, she was looking at him, almost as pale as Harry, but eerily composed.

“Take children to the Burrow, Ron, or make sure Molly finds someone to take care of them – Ginny might want her mom by her side. I need you to keep a cool head about you now, darling, whatever issues we have, they are not as important as this. Our number one priority here is to make sure Ginny and the baby are OK. Can I count on you?”

He nodded numbly, unable to pull his head out of the vicious circles of “ _What if…_ ” and “ _If only…_ ”, but he felt her tiny fingers squeeze his shoulder to show him her understanding, her trust and her conviction that they can still fix this and when he looked at her again, she looked strangely younger, like Hermione he knew at school, his girl, the only girl he ever felt anything for and it jump-started him enough to wake him up and pull him out of his stupor.

“You can count on me,” he said quietly. “Let’s not lose any more time, shall we?”

She gave a tiny, barely perceptible nod and said almost sadly: “None of us can be too proud of how we behaved this morning, you know. We need to learn to handle this differently… somehow. It’s just sad that it takes something as grave this to makes us see the folly of our ways. It’s always the innocents who get hurt…”

And with these words she was gone and if Ron didn’t promise, give his word that she can count on him, he would have allowed himself collapse onto the ground. He was bone-tired and emotionally drained and the images of blood pooling around his only sister were impossible to shake and began to be mixed with those of the pale long fingers he had been cleaning blood, cuts and splinters from only hours before… A small million of unwarranted thoughts flooded his tired mind; thoughts of Ginny and how she was the second person that got hurt today, perhaps a little bit because of him as well; thoughts that he should really have known better than to go around hurting people left and right and ruining everyone’s lives; thoughts of how _he_ was doing and if perhaps, there has been any change…

And he cut them all abruptly and gathered all of his wits about, because he needed to be cool and composed and his sister needed him and Harry did. He couldn’t afford to screw this up, he couldn’t allow guilt to corrode the beautiful love they shared. He was clinging onto it desperately, it was the world of good and pure and familiar – and on the other side only chaos awaited. And a pair of silken grey eyes.

~

Just an apparation away a young man was stirring restlessly in his bed and the jittery house-elf tried to keep blankets about him, but to no avail. Draco Malfoy was feverish and sunken deeply into unconsciousness, he was pursuing a string of images no one else could see and it was making him trash about and gasp for breath powerlessly. The muted sounds he made spoke of horror, fear and helplessness trapped inside him and the house-elf was quite beside himself at the sight of his Master’s suffering.

Pretty much at the end of his rope, he took the lion shaped pendant and forced the young man’s hands around him, whispering frantically:

“Young Master must hold on to this and say your loved one’s name… It will make him feel better…”

And as soon as the ice cold hands of the feverish blond closed around the pendant, his body relaxed as if by a miracle and the fingers contracted around it as if they were holding onto a lifeline.

“Ron…” was the only word that made it past his scorched-dry chapped lips and after a while he breathed out pleadingly, with effort: “Don’t leave me again… Ron…”

And suddenly the features of his face, twisted by agony, seemed to have relaxed at long last and in the peace that washed over them the house-elf imagined he could see a hint of a beautiful loving smile.


	38. Love from the shadows

_With arms wide open under the sunlight_  
 _Welcome to this place I'll show you everything_  
 _With arms wide open now everything has changed_  
 _I'll show you love I'll show you everything_

Arms wide open, Creed

 

“Gosh… look, how _small_ it is…”

Harry Potter’s eyes were transfixed on a tiny bundle, pushed into his hands long moments ago, which he accepted with utmost care and shaky fingers as if it scared the wits out of him by its very presence. Since then he just held it as if he was afraid to touch it, to disturb the perfection that was his child.

“ _He_ ,” Ron corrected him with a huge smile and hugged him tightly with one long arm across the shoulders. “Look how small _he_ is. You’ve got a son, Potter. And not a small one at all, regardless of how he might seem to you! Rosie was full 2 inches shorter and given his weight… Ginny must have gone through hell pushing him out!”

And the very mention of his sister wiped the smile of his face and replaced it with worry deeply sunken into his eyes. They were kicked out of emergency room at St. Mungo’s the second Ginny delivered and the Healers went bonkers with keeping everything sterile. They hadn’t been able to deter Ron from storming right back in to demand more information in not so subtle a voice, but Harry had been kept at bay by the small bundle they had delivered into his arms and which he continued to peruse with utmost wonder.

“How is she?” the raven-haired young man asked his best friend and fellow culprit quietly, his eyes never leaving the precious burden they supported. “Are they still…?”

“The Healers are still working on her; she’s as good as can be expected… but not as well as we could hope for had there been ideal circumstances. She has lost a lot of blood, Harry,” the redhead sighed quietly, with misery and guilt unmistakeably carved into his voice. “She could have been gone, we could have lost her and I don’t know how my parents, Mom in particular – “

But he saw the jet-black eyelashes of his best mate close rapidly as if trying to protect him from a world of hurt and when the curve of the lips pressed together as if attempting to keep back the unspoken words of apology and regret  – Ron Weasley realized he didn’t have it in him to hurt his lover some more. He was always his protector and Harry had experienced suffering enough in his young life - Ron wasn’t going to allow the first moments with his first-born to be spiked with bitterness.

“But you were on time,” he said gently and boldly pressed a small kiss into the side of his raven-black hair, even messier than usual. “And she’s got lots of fight left in her, my sister, and she’s got lots to live for with the little - … what’s going to be his name, actually?” he looked down at his best mate with part genuine curiosity, part careful intent to redirect Harry’s thoughts to a less painful and less guilt-ridden subject.

“Well… that’s actually one thing we _could_ agree upon,” the young man sighed deeply and for the first time his fingers slowly, carefully reached out to explore the little treasure he was given. Gently repositioning the cloth protecting the baby from the too-bright artificial light, the man who never thought he’d make it long enough to become a father looked in the face of his son for the first time. And got hit instantly.

“James Sirius Potter,” he breathed, his words almost fading into silence and he vaguely realized it was lucky he had been sitting down, because he was suddenly and completely unexpectedly trashed down to the point of dizziness by the massive wave of love and protectiveness that washed over him at the sight of the little chubby face, adorned with the long jet-black eyelashes and pouty mouth that was at the same time reminiscent of himself and of his favourite redhead that was sitting right next to him, sharing his most intimate, fragile moments of bliss and wonder.

“Gods... He’s got a bit of me around the eyes…” Harry spoke in a shaky voice, almost breathless under a rush of unexpected feelings of possessiveness, pride and vulnerability, “… and a bit of you around the mouth…” he whispered, his eyes darting to his redheaded lover almost pleadingly, not to crush the illusion that this little being somehow brought them together rather than pushed them apart.

And Ron could read the tiny hope in his voice as clearly as if it was spoken out aloud – and it crushed the very heart in his chest and pushed him into a sudden, spontaneous decision. He managed a small smile to hide his heartbreak and leaned down past Harry’s shoulder to kiss the little radiant creature on his forehead most gently and proceeded to tell him in a hushed tender voice:

“Welcome to this world, James Sirius Potter. Welcome, little nephew. Your daddy is here and by the looks of it, you’ve already made a life-long fan out of him.”

He caressed the tiny round cheek with his long fingers lovingly and leaned down to kiss him again as if he couldn’t resist it, using the opportunity to whisper a quiet spell into the tiny ear. Harry wouldn’t have known it, even if he had heard him say it, for it was their family heirloom, a little something the Weasley men got from their father to proudly establish and acknowledge the connection with their own flesh and blood, though, funnily enough, Ron never felt compelled to use it over any of his own kids. But _this_ , his not entirely clear-thinking brain was telling him, was necessary.

And when the little boy unexpectedly chose this very moment to open his eyes, Ron knew it was worth it. The wind literally got knocked out of his Harry. James Sirius Potter looked at the world and his awed dad through the eyes of the most brilliant blue the Weasley lineage could come up with. A colour Ginny never had herself, but could be reasoned it was passed through her by her parentage. Ron knew better, but chose to say nothing when Harry stared at the baby in his arms, mouth opened and completely mesmerised. He knew without a shadow of a doubt that what he ventured to do, had worked. Harry was completely, irrevocably and head over heels in love with his son. There could be no other interpretation of the sweet love magic, that Lily Evans must have once had, simply pouring out of him. As far as Ron was concerned, his job here was done.

“I never knew...” Harry whispered quietly as if lost, his eyes still caught in the heavenly blue of his son’s eyes as if he was completely spellbound by the sacred little pools of sapphire light. “You tried to tell me, but I never knew... so precious... so tiny... so, so incredibly... mine. Priceless…”

And only when drops of warm liquid landed on the soft baby skin and startled his little boy into waving the little arms uncoordinatedly while attempting to gurgle most adorably at the same time, Harry Potter, the Boy who lived to be a father, realized he was crying.

“Oh, bloody hell...” he sniffed and awkwardly tried to wipe the proof of this unexpected weakness away by rubbing his wet cheek on his own shoulder, because there was no way in hell he was ever letting his baby go. Ever again. He can grow up, go to Hogwarts and get married right there, in Harry’s lap. He was sure there must be a way.

But Ron just chuckled at him softly with a tiny hint of glee and punched his shoulder lightly as if he was trying to mask the strange tenderness that never left his eyes:

“None of that vocabulary around my little nephew, Potter! You’ll be minding the language now for the next 20 odd years, or my mother will feed you soap for breakfast! Oh, baby…” he whispered more quietly, genuinely moved by the look of his Harry, sniffing and unable to stop his tears, all tense shoulders, shaking with crying, stretched protectively around his most prized possession.

The redhead was unable to help himself - he had never seen his Harry laid so open and bare in front of him and he found it so moving and adorable that he risked another quick peck onto his wet cheek and mussed the infamous nest of black hair lovingly:

“Look at you now, you’ve gone all soft around him... Go on, then, let me hold him, so you can be a cry-baby good and proper – you won’t get a better moment than this one, you know,” he added gently when he his best mate unexpectedly leaned into his shoulder and the wet face lit up with the biggest proudest smile that simply made the Saviour of the wizarding world beam with radiant happiness.

If it was anyone else, they would have to pry that baby out of Harry’s hands with force, but because this was him, his Ron, the one person that fit perfectly into this precious circle of unimaginable bliss and intimacy, he complied. And the redhead could see right through him: the ultimate trust with which his best mate carefully placed his son into Ron’s practiced solid hold, the way he leaned into his lover’s shoulder yet again as if he was trusting him to support all the weight of the world when he was so very vulnerable, the way his arm found its way to wrap around Ron’s and brought them even closer – in Harry’s mind and soul they were a family, the three of them. And that broke Ron’s heart just a little more.

He had to look away with a knot in his throat not to throw it all to the dogs and kiss him, kiss away the raw tenderness which made Harry press his face tightly against Ron’s shoulder as if trying to hide his weakness from the world and thank him at the same time to be here for him, to let him sob in his arms freely, to share with him the precious moments in which Harry Potter, the orphaned boy who desperately craved someone to love and someone to love him back, felt _whole_ for the first time in his life.

Unexpectedly moved to tears himself, Ron made sure he kept his eyes on the round face of the newest addition to the Weasley-Potter line, as he was barely able to resist hugging his Harry stupid and tell him how much he loved him for falling - and falling apart - for his son the way he did. That Harry, sobbing quietly into his robes, unexpectedly locking his wiry arms around his waist and holding for dear life, was his favourite Harry of all times and his very insides ached to hold him, to protect him and to give him all that precious love he felt for him openly, with no reservations. But he couldn’t do that.

They would be hurting too many people; open display of affection in so public a place, with any member of their extensive family bound to burst in at any moment might threaten the very thing Harry was so desperate to hold on to, a chance of a family – and that just wasn’t an option. So he settled for leaning his head into his best mate and had his cheek resting against the soft jet black hair as he stared down into a cherub face of his little nephew, thinking of all the opportunities and all the lost chances.   

The baby was exceptionally pretty. Newborn babies usually weren’t, Ron knew, after all he had three of his own and even though they have been his most prized possession from the moment they put them in his arms – none of them were exactly postcard-pretty. Rose was born with a fluff of unruly ginger strands sticking around the little head in all directions like antennas and was purple red from bawling the bejesus out of her from the moment they cleaned her mouth and she caught her first breath. But she cut off her howling as if by a miracle as soon as she was placed into her big sniffing dad’s hands and just stared at the redheaded giant with awe in her big blue eyes. At the time there was no creature more beautiful under the sun for besotted Ron – and  he still stared in disbelief at the magical photographs from that day, portraying a red-skinned messy-haired creature that looked nothing like the beauty he remembered holding close to his heart.

And the twins were indeed tiny, with wrinkled skin that looked as if it was too big for them, but of course the overjoyed father could see none of their faults on the spot – they were simply the world’s most beautiful babies – even if they weren’t. This father’s love adorned them with grace no other could match.

But this baby, James Sirius Potter, Harry’s son, was simply the prettiest newborn Ron had ever laid eyes on, and he could say that as an unbiased observer. His skin was rosy and clean, the round cheeks closing most adorably around the pouting soft mouth that will one day drive girls crazy; he had a tiny little mound for a nose, just a hint of dark hair with an auburn tinge covering a perfectly shaped round head and those eyes… Ron couldn’t really know if it was the spell’s doing, perhaps this little part-Weasley would be born with this spectacular colour nevertheless, but he congratulated himself silently all the same. Against the contrast of a thick fan of long, jet-black eyelashes, James Potter looked as a creature from another world with those heavenly blue eyes. Ron knew it was the same sapphire shade he himself had, but still – he didn’t think his colour looked quite as striking as it did against that soft fan of thick black eyelashes his little nephew boasted. There was no denying it – James Sirius Potter was beautiful.

He stared at Ron quietly, as if immersed in deep observation, but when Ron offered him his finger he grabbed it most eagerly and put it in his mouth with no reservation. It tickled and Ron let out a chuckle, gently caressing the adorable little creature’s cheek with his thumb:

“Aren’t you a greedy little thing, Jamie… The Potter drive for adventure and the Weasley appetite, this one! I bet you’ll outgrow this skinny prat that calls himself your dad by the time you’re 12, grandma Molly will take care of that! And I’m willing to put every galleon I’ll ever earn on the line that you’ll have girls swooning at your feet with these lovely eyes! You’re just one big bundle of charm, aren’t you… yes you are! So pretty… and so precious… and loved… you have no idea… I have your dad here melting into a puddle already and he only got to hold you for about 3 seconds. Just wait till you meet the rest of your family! And I…”

“Jamie…” interrupted a low, tired-sounding voice of his dad. “I see you’ve already met your chatty godfather.”

At the stunned look from Ron, Harry simply pressed himself deeper into his favourite redhead’s personal space and spoke in a quiet shaking voice:

“I love you, Ron. Now more than I ever did in my life. And I want to give you this, it was always going to be yours, even if we didn’t… you know. God knows I wish I could give you more, give you everything, ask you to be a part of my family together with James, just the three of us… but you said it yourself, you don’t want it, not like this, not by hurting people left and right… So this is going to have to be it… for now. Cause I’m not giving you up, Ronald Weasley, I’m not selling my dreams of being with you, not for anything on this world, not for anyone, not even for my little treasure here. You’ll be mine one day, I want to have you, I _need_ to have you, the world doesn’t feel right when you’re not around. I’ll wait for you as long as it takes. Just promise you’ll be waiting with me…”

“Oh, Harry… you wonderful, lovely fool…” Ron murmured, unable to keep the tremor from his voice. He longed to hug him properly, tell him that he’ll be there for him, always, in any form he needed him to be, his best mate, lover, his son’s godfather, anything, at that moment he would have done _anything_ for his Harry. But he never got around to doing any of those things.

“Harry.”

Molly Weasley’s voice was uncommonly subdued and calm, but there was a quiet undeterminable edge in it, that made Harry move away from Ron abruptly and look at his mother-in-law with heavy guilty heart.

“I’d like a word in private, please. Ron can mind the baby, I see he’s already settled into the role quite comfortably.”

“Sure,” Harry murmured, unable to deny his adamant mother-in-law anything; at least not now, when his rash behaviour almost cost them her daughter’s life. He caught a worried tense look in Ron’s eyes before he followed the woman that was as good as his mother in everything but a name.

~

It should not have come as a surprise when Molly took hold of his hand and disapparated them before he could blink – after all, there was little privacy to be found in the emergency ward of St. Mungo’s swarming with an abundance of upset members of the extensive Weasley family, vastly resembling a wasp-nest. But it still felt strangely surreal when from one moment to the other the sterile white scenery of St. Mungo’s changed for the sun-lit kitchen of the Burrow, where he spent so many happy moments in the company of his favourite family. His _only_ family. _Until now_.

 “Couldn’t have found a private spot there if I offered galleons,” the sturdy woman apologized matter-of-factly and collapsed onto her favourite, splendidly worn-out sofa and mumbled:

“Oh, my blasted feet are killing me. I’m getting too old for this drama, and believe me, if I could bottle drama and sell it, I would have been richer than the Malfoys! Go on, sit, darling, sit,” she gestured towards Harry with her usual friendly impatience and patted the place next to her.

“Merlin knows we haven’t got much time, I need to be back in a jiffy, but there’s no point in you standing there like you’re at the Wizengamot trial, you know! There, all better,” she smiled kindly when Harry offered a weak smile and slipped onto the designated place at her side. And only from up close he saw that her smile was just a tad sad.

“Today was a very special day, Harry,” she started with the cheerfulness that sounded just a little bit forced. “You got yourself a gorgeous, healthy little boy and seeing you shed those tears told me everything I needed to know about your feelings for the little angel. However…” she stopped and he could see that she was fighting to find the right words and expressions of the usual warmth and exceptional worry were interchangeably taking place on the kind face that came to represent everything he called home.

 “Oh, my, this is embarrassing,” sighed Molly and shifted uncomfortably. “Still… it has to be done. Harry, love, you know I don’t like to meddle and god knows I’d be better off knowing less of what goes on in this family sometimes, but I couldn’t help to wonder… is everything alright between you and Ginny, dear?”

When she saw the flabbergasted expression on his face she continued hastily, eager to explain herself:

“You see, I’ve only been wondering, because… well, because when the Healers told you to leave the room and charged you with the baby, I might have twisted one my old friend’s arm a little to let me back in and when Ginny saw me, only me, she started crying uncontrollably. Honestly – it was a flood. And she is no cry-baby, my daughter, she can give as good as she gets, but I suppose the whole experience of pregnancy and birth might have tipped the balance of her hormones sideways a little.

At first, I was hardly surprised, after all, I bawled loud enough to wake the dead on my mother’s bosom all the same once my beautiful Billy was born. But those were tears of happiness and hers… apparently weren’t. You see, when I asked her if she wanted me to send for you and for the baby, she went all hysterical on me. I believe her exact words were: _“Oh, no, mom, for the love of everything that’s sacred, please don’t! I don’t want him to see me like this, he might love me even less.”_ – and that, as you can see, startled me just a little,” she said kindly, but her astute eyes, charged with motherly instinct and years of experience never left Harry’s face as if it was not going to be his words, but his face that would help her form an opinion.

“No mother to a newborn should feel like that, especially on a day when she brought such a treasure to this world!” Molly continued a tad more resolutely. “She should feel cherished and accomplished and loved and… it’s just not there, Harry. So – as much as I hate to do this, and trust me, I truly do – I must ask you this: is everything alright between the two of you? Or are we going to have a problem?”

“And mind you,” she added hastily, “I’m not talking about the unfortunate circumstances of what happened today – I know about the row, Hermione might have mentioned it - these things happen and it was just an unfortunate coincidence that the baby decided to arrive at that moment. I’m sure this was not your first, nor your last disagreement - Merlin is my witness that I know all there is to know about the Weasley temper! - and there is no need _whatsoever_ to feel guilty about that, darling… but Ginny’s unhappiness seemed to be rooted a tad deeper than just a one-time clash of opinions with her beloved husband.”

“Now - she wouldn’t tell me what you two rowed about…” Molly paused and at this point the only thought in Harry’s befuddled brain was a desperate _“Thank god for life’s little mercies”._

“… but it took quite some effort on my part to finally calm her down and I managed only _after_ I’ve given her a solid promise that I would, at no point, allow you to take a glimpse of her in such a state. And that, Harry dear, is not alright, it is simply unacceptable. The young family should be together in those first moments after the delivery, this is when the most priceless bonds are made – and your wife seems to think you don’t love her enough to be able to handle a sight of her after she’s been through hell and back to give you your first-born child! Anyone’s alarm bells would have gone off at that! Oh, Harry, dearest…”

It was obvious this was exceptionally hard for her as she hugged him across the shoulders fiercely when Harry finally allowed his face to sink into the palms of his hands. He just couldn’t stand another moment of staring at the kind worried face with the guilt and misery bursting his heart open.

What the hell was he supposed to do?! He _hated_ lying to her… but he couldn’t tell her the truth either. He imagined her face if he blurted out the words that he so desperately wanted to say, wanted for the whole world to know: _“I’ve made a huge mistake, it’s your son I love, not your daughter, please let us be happy together.”_

It would have devastated her, especially now, with the baby around and Ginny being her daughter - someone she would undoubtedly try to protect just as fiercely as he ever would Jamie – nope, the truth was, sadly, out of the question. But since he couldn’t give her the truth, the poor woman might as well benefit from his and Ron’s decision to keep their love in the shade for as long as their kids can take their place in this world – she deserved as much for all the kindness she ever gave him. So closed his eyes and exhaled deeply as if he was letting go of his most priceless hopes and dreams and did what he always did best: saved someone’s world.

“No, there’s not going to be a problem,” he said quietly, with as much honesty and conviction he could muster. “It has been... a difficult few months,” he admitted to mask the insincerity hiding underneath his words from a woman that raised far too many children to be fooled easily. “You know how Ginny gets sometimes and with things being as intense as they were in the last few months – the marriage, the baby, the whole career change – I think we were both left a bit worse for wear than we were willing to admit even to ourselves. And it created a certain... tension in the house, I won’t lie about that... You know her temper as well as I do and I’m afraid I haven’t been exactly a model husband either... I could definitely do with some more patience and understanding – but I’m afraid I don’t know much about a loving family and even less about what it takes to have a quality family life…” he looked at her half pleadingly, half apologetically and it worked like a charm.

“Oh, you poor thing, of course you don’t, how could you?!” Molly all but sobbed into his hair. “Growing up with those monsters the way you did... It will be alright, you’ll see, you’ll find a way, my poor darlings, these things always take time and Merlin knows it sometimes takes an awful lot out of a person, keeping it together and making it work... but as long as there is love in the house, things have a way of working out, dear,” she finished kindly, hopefully – and Harry knew exactly what would have put all her fears to peace. But he _couldn’t_ give her that. Love and respect her as he might, he simply didn’t have it in him to blatantly lie to her face about what he felt for her daughter – not, when all he wanted to do was to scream from the rooftops how bad he had it for her son, his Ron; his cruel and selfless Ron, who was making him do this.

“I took up a teaching job to get out of the line of fire and be there for our family, didn’t I?” he told her with a weak smile instead and his heart got squeezed bitterly in his chest at the sight of her face brightening in what she understood to be a proclamation of love and dedication. But there was no way back now, he decided to do this and he would do anything, say any bloody thing to win her good grace back and secretly earn the approval of the only person whose opinion he really cared about.     

“I was foolish and selfish,” he trod on, encouraged by her reluctance to question his motives and determined to finish the awkward conversation as soon as possible and return to what he already quietly labelled as his “ _little family_ ”. “But that ends now. I will go and see Ginny immediately and I’d like to see a fool that would try to stop me. And I intend to apologize and hope she’ll still have me...” he looked at his mother-in-law sheepishly and he was not disappointed:

“Oh, don’t be silly, darling, of course she’ll have you! Everyone knows she’s – as you children so practically call it - “ _bonkers about you_ ”!  Surely it was just her insecurities speaking and as soon as you put those to peace... – come, darling, there’s not a moment to lose, you must be desperate to see her and your gorgeous little son! I honestly don’t believe I’ve _ever_ seen a child so pretty and I’ve seen a small army of them, so you can trust me on that! Well, perhaps my Billy, he was an exceptionally lovely child, everyone had said that and...”

Molly, evidently beyond relieved the awkward conversation went so well, wouldn’t even let the disapparation stop her prattling, but Harry was hardly in a state to keep up with her small talk. He desperately needed to see Ron, needed to see his little Jamie to soak up some strength for the upcoming conversation with Ginny which he so did _not_ want to have – but to which there was no way around if he wanted to have some semblance of a family. So as soon as they apparated into the gloomy hallway of the St. Mungo’s emergency ward, he took Molly’s hand into his with determination.

“Thank you so much for helping us out, Molly,” he said as honestly as he could and he saw the round face almost melt in affection. “I have one last favour to ask. Would you be so kind to go ahead and see if my wife is fit to talk to me and if so, I would very much appreciate it if you could try to prepare her a little for my visit while I got to fetch our little Jamie, so we can finally be a family, good and proper. I’d really hate to ask you, but...”

“Oh, Harry, dearest, of course it’s no bother, don’t be silly! Knowing my daughter I’ll first have to out-shout her to listen to me – and once she sets eyes on that baby, she’ll never want you to leave! I won’t be a moment...” she threw her arms around him affectionately one last time, before she straightened her robes and adamantly set off to have a word – a very loud one, Harry had a feeling – with the unfortunate Healer on duty.

And Harry hurried down to corridor to use up the precious time as good as he could, when he suddenly stopped dead in his track upon hearing Arthur Weasley’s voice:

“... I’d recognise it anywhere, Ron, it’s our family heirloom, whatever for would you feel compelled to use it on Harry’s child, son?!”

Harry made another careful, quiet step and his best mate and his father came into full view. Arthur’s face was uncommonly stern and worried, but even though Ron had his eyes focused on the little child, still safely tucked in his arms and currently asleep with the little fist tightly holding on to Ron’s long finger – his lover’s eyes were stormy and defiant as if he had indeed done something that needed justifying.

But then Ron unexpectedly lifted up his gaze and looked his father straight in the face:

“Why did you feel compelled to use it on me then, dad? Why me? I can understand Bill, he was your first – but why me? I’ve always wondered, ever since you told me of its existence? Why did you single me out?”

The look of shock on Arthur Weasley’s face was impossible to miss, but it soon faded into strange kind of softness:

“Because I had a strange feeling that you, of all my children, would need it. I gave it to Bill, he was my first, but Charlie didn’t need one, I knew he was going to be strong, he was born a screamer. And then there was Percy, so alike me that there was really no need - and then the twins came and they were a force of nature. And then it was you. Another boy, after Molly had so desperately hoped for a girl. And the house was already full of the little feet and the loud voices and I had a feeling that you, of all my children, are going to find it hard to claim your place under the sun.

So I gave you this. To show you that you belong, that I _wanted_ you here in spite of everything, that you were welcome. And mine. The moment you looked at me I knew you were always going to be a bit more Weasley than a Prewett; perhaps find it a little harder to make your mark than your more... _colourful_ and louder siblings, but someone who would know how to leave an unforgettable impression in the lives of those he touched. And I want you to know, Ron, you never let down any of the hopes I had for you, you rose far above them, son.”

And Harry could see how very welcome was the arm that slipped around Ron’s shoulders as his best mate looked at his dad with awe in his brilliant blue eyes as if he saw him for the first time.

And then Ron smiled, one of those bright, blissful smiles that had the power to light up the room and said quietly:

“I suppose I always knew you loved me, dad, but it’s still... after all these years it’s still nice to hear you say it. I love you, too. You were always my hero.”

And he leaned his head onto Arthur’s shoulder and Harry could see the older man was almost moved to tears.

“Oh, Ronnie.... blimey... making your old man soft like that... But still... why this child, Ron, why none of your own?”

“Same reasons,” I suppose, Ron shrugged quietly. “None of the others needed it – Hugo, obviously, got the colour without my interference – but this child... Harry wants me to be his godfather, did you know? And I wanted him to have a piece of me. I can’t really ever give Harry anything that would count, you know? I haven’t got anything special and he’s got it all already! He’s brave, and wonderful all around and such a sweetheart to everyone.... he wanted me when no one wanted me and he’s Harry bloody Potter, textbook material! And he chose me over Malfoy that first day that we met and he just kept on giving... and I can’t ever give anything back.

And then I saw him look at the little Jamie here... so vulnerable, both of them... And I couldn’t think of anything better than this: love and protection for his most prized possession. It’s what you told me it was. A bond beyond the colour it comes with. I want to give Harry - and my godson – a piece of me. Is that such a crime, dad?”

“Oh, Ron...”

Arthur Weasley looked at his youngest son with a mixture of pity and pride in his eyes and sighed with quiet resignation after a short while:

“No, it’s not a crime, just... I won’t ask why... you must have your reasons. I suppose your lives are already intertwined... and little Jamie here could use the extra care... and knowledge he is appreciated for himself, not just because he’s Harry Potter’s son. Some shoes this child has to fill! You better do your work as a godfather good and proper, son...”

“I fully intend to,” Ron said softly, his eyes back on the sleeping baby’s face. “Merlin, he’s precious. He’s got “ _heartbreaker_ ” written all over this pretty little face! He’s all Harry, isn’t he? Well, perhaps here, around the mouth, he’s got a bit of Weasley and he’s got a heart-shaped face like mom and – well, you saw his eyes, didn’t you? Who’d say Weasley colour would go so well with those black eyelashes! And...”

Harry could take no more – Ron swooning over his son, _their son_ – made his knees weak and his heart beat like a thunder in his chest: he was sure he was never more in love with his best mate as he was in that moment. He desperately wanted to kiss him and thank him for the wonderful gift he gave his child, for the priceless magnificent connection he had made between them; to tell him to run away with him, to take their child and go somewhere, someplace away from it all, where they could be themselves and be a family and live their happily ever after and never let go...

If it wasn’t for Arthur, sitting next to his son and his grandson, watching them almost mesmerised with a big uncharacteristic grin on his face, Harry Potter, the Saviour of the wizarding world, would have thrown it all to the dogs in that very moment and would have done all that and more. He was sure he could make Ron to follow somehow; he knew his favourite redhead would have done anything for him in the end. But there was no way around Arthur, sitting there like a fortress wall set up by the gleeful gods, saying “ _To here and no further_ ”.

But even Arthur could not keep him away from his little family. He told himself he had a good excuse, was headed there anyway, he was just going to take Jamie from Ron’s arms and perhaps enjoy a moment, a perfectly sensible moment sitting next to Ron, soaking up his warmth and strength before Molly called him. But he largely over-estimated his own self-restraint, the way he always did around Ron.

He approached them, all soft knees and unaware of all the treacherous hungry emotions reflecting across his features, unable to glue his eyes away from Ron’s pretty face, wearing that dreamy sweet expression that always tend to leave Harry helpless and with heart beating through his ears. And when Ron’s face unexpectedly lifted and their eyes connected, tenderness flickering inside those blue pools of light left Harry without a functioning brain and his heart nearly exploded in wanting, wanting... He had never wanted anything more in his life than to touch Ron in that moment and simply merge with him; immerse into the shade of that magnificent body, arched protectively over their little boy, look for all the right answers in the light of those brilliant blue eyes he couldn’t live without and let his heart come to life on those soft alluring lips that always delivered him straight to heaven.

“Merlin...” he managed in a shaky voice and in a split second Ron recognised what this was and his eyes went dark with despair.

“Harry...” he tried, the warning in his voice unmistakable, but it would have been all in vain because the air was suddenly thick and crackling with Harry’s unabated magic and Arthur’s eyes just got wide with sudden recognition. He was merely steps away from claiming his Ron, his elusive redheaded lover he was obsessed with, his eyes glowing like green torches and invincible and he was going to get him this time and fuck all –

And the strong fingers wrapped themselves around Harry’s shoulder and stopped him dead in his track, while the calm, though slightly shaking voice of Molly Weasley broke through what was left of the magic:

“You need to come with me, Harry. Just you... and the baby. She’s not very well, my Ginny, and it might do her good.”

Her voice almost cracked under a sudden onslaught of feelings and Harry looked at her as if he just woke up from a trance:

“Of course,” he said in a detached, almost formal voice, as if on auto-pilot. Ron got up and handed him little Jamie without even looking at him, as if he was desperate to downplay the magnitude of what almost went down between them, but Arthur’s alert bright blue eyes never left Harry’s face, as if he was suddenly seeing his son-in-law in a completely new light.

“How is Ginny, mom? What’s the matter with her? Can we see her?” Ron called behind his mother, as if he was desperate to stall the moment when he was to be alone with his father and sure enough, Molly turned on her heel.

“Not very well at all, I’m afraid. She keeps on slipping in and out of consciousness, she had indeed lost a lot of blood and it is as if... she is not that _eager_ to stay with us, not that eager at all...” she sniffed and covered her mouth with a shaky hand. Arthur hurried to her side to offer his support, but she merely shook her head and patted his cheek absent-mindedly.

“They don’t want us to storm in and out, the lot of us. Just Harry and I... and the baby. Feeling his presence around might help. She needs her peace and quiet to recover and not too many people poking about. So go home, Arthur dear, get some rest and take here Ron with you. If this turns out to be a lengthy stay, we’ll need to take turns. Hermione and I will stay here until the morning and they’ve already set up a bed for Harry and the baby in the adjacent room. Fleur said the kids are welcome to stay as long as they like in the Shell Cottage – they are having a splendid time with their cousins and the less they know of this mess, the better. You two come here and replace us in the morning. Make sure you eat something at home, dear, food in this place is god-awful, I don’t know how they can expect anyone getting better being fed trash like this! There’s ready-made stew charmed fresh in the kitchen and – _oh, Arthur_!”

Molly’s round face was suddenly flooded with tears. 

“Why does this keep happening to us!? Why can’t we have one year without fearing for someone’s life?! I thought when the war was over... I couldn’t stand losing another child, I couldn’t!”

“Molly... darling... I’m sure you won’t have to... I’m sure the Healers are doing their best and Harry here will help, won’t you, Harry?”

He looked at his son-in-law with eyes that were dark with despair and Harry, with a sudden knot in his throat, felt himself nodding before he could think. The baby in his arms suddenly felt heavy and he realized how very tired he was and how much was still expected of him.

“You do this and you do this right, Harry,” he heard Ron’s soft whisper in his ear and he shivered in the warmth of his breath and at the weight of his words. “Or things can never be alright between us again. You know that. You don’t know the weight of guilt like I do – and I’m telling you, it is a terrible one. So do it for Ginny, who only always loved you with all her heart; do it for the little Jamie here, so he can grow up with a mom, like you couldn’t – and for us. Do it for us, Harry. So we don’t lose what we have.”

And Harry, with little James in his arm, couldn’t do anything but nod numbly. Ron was clear: he would do what he asked of him, or lose him. And Harry Potter would do anything to avoid that. Even postpone his own happiness for an odd decade or so.

“Tomorrow morning, then?” he looked at him pleadingly and saw Ron’s eyes soften as the redhead gave a little nod.

“First thing tomorrow morning. I’ll be here. We’ll go for a walk. Have some time to ourselves. You and I and little Jamie here, if the weather holds. How’s that?”

Harry’s eyes spoke volumes of words he couldn’t say in front of Ron’s parents, but at least now he had something to look forward to, so he merely nodded in agreement: “Great.... perfect.”

His voice was unable to hide how very tired he felt, but when he looked up into Ron’s eyes and saw a hint of a promise, he forced a smile, just for him, and whispered his goodbye: “Until tomorrow, then...”

As soon as they disappeared around the corner Ron felt as if his legs would give in. The emotional stress he went through, the lack of sleep and all the misery he witnessed in the last few hours were proving too much. All he wanted to do was to close his eyes and sleep. But when the long bony fingers of his father wrapped around his shoulders Ron closed his eyes and thought that this day, surely, was cursed. Apparently he couldn’t have a _single bloody thing_ he wished for. He felt his muscles tense in defiance as his father slowly turned him towards himself – but instead of bombarding him with questions, Arthur Weasley merely pulled his youngest son onto his chest and held him in a tight embrace. And his father’s voice was shaky but resolute when he spoke quietly:

“I told you I wouldn't ask why you chose to leave your mark on Harry’s child… and now I know. The way he looks at you… god, how could I be so blind… how could _anyone_ be so blind! Shhhh, don’t say anything, I don’t want to know!” warned Arthur when Ron opened his mouth to explain. So the younger redhead obediently shut his mouth and just leaned his head onto his dad’s shoulder. He closed his eyes and felt like a child again, comforted in his big dad’s arms. It didn’t happen very often, Arthur Weasley was a busy man who worked around the clock to make the ends meet for his large family – but still, when they happened, those moments were priceless and forever burnt into Ron’s memory.

Back then, as a child, he had felt important. Cherished and accepted and important when his dad held him like this and even now, when he was way past the age when his father’s hug should provide him with comfort, Ron found that it did, strangely so. He felt… _accepted_. And he remembered the bond between them, bond that Arthur _chose_ to bestow upon him, and smiled a weary smile into his father’s shoulder yet again. 

“I want you to know how very proud of you I am for doing the right thing,” Arthur spoke unexpectedly and startled him into opening his eyes. “I saw the way he looked at you, I felt his magnificent magic - and I saw your face. I don’t know, how you keep the balance, Ron, but for god’s sake, keep it for a while longer. And thank you. In the name of your sister and you mother. I just hope… you are not too miserable… son…?”

And that subtle care, resonating from Arthur’s voice in the end, somehow made it all better. His wonderful quiet dad seemed to have guessed his deepest secret – and he seemed to have accepted it as a given and he didn’t seem to think any less of him for it. Well, not your _deepest_ secret, a quiet mocking voice whispered from the back of his brain and the image of grey eyes and silken blond hair flashed in front of his eyes so suddenly and unexpectedly, he shivered. _How was he?_ Another person who got hurt through him… At least that one he could still save.

From one moment to another he knew what he wanted to do. He slowly pulled out of his father embrace and looked his him in the face, creased with worry, and allowed a small tired smile stretch his soft generous mouth in a clumsy attempt to reassure him:

“I will be OK, dad. It’s just… _complicated_ at the moment. But it needn’t be. Harry will stay by Ginny’s side as long as his child – or children – need him, that much is… agreed and as good as a given and she doesn’t need to know any different. And neither does mom. So no one needs to lose sleep over that. I am… I _will be_ fine,” he said quietly and looked at the floor, unable to hold a gaze of the person whose job it was to see through other people’s lies. And only when he received an encouraging pat on the shoulder, did he grow bolder and added hastily:

“But I should really like to go now, if you don’t mind. You’ve heard mom, we need to be well-rested in the morning to take over and Merlin knows I could use some sleep. And… thanks, dad… you know… for caring.”

He looked his father in the eye with genuine gratitude and unexpectedly felt himself pulled into another bone-crushing embrace.

“Stay strong, my son,” whispered Arthur and he honestly couldn’t remember admiring his youngest reckless son more. But Ron merely nodded and disapparated. He wasn’t lying when he said he needed his rest. And he knew exactly where to get it.

~

Draco swam out of his haze yet again and stared in front of himself blankly for a few long moments. Nothing much made sense again and he was so bloody tired. His mind was strangely blank and his limbs felt leaden, but it was not an entirely unpleasant feeling: just as if his body was somehow detached, sunk into this nice and warm honey that made it hard to try and lift a hand and really, why should he try to, because this was nice and he was just so damn _exhausted_ …

And then in a flash of memory it all came back to him and his heart almost leapt out of his chest… _Ron_! Ron was gone from his life… but then another memory formed slowly and it was the one of a single kiss, so sweet and overwhelming that he felt bliss and warmth spread all over his body in a flash and he could just die of happiness… He tried lifting his head, but he was just too damn tired, but his eyes, hungry for a glimpse of him, darted around the room in vain – the redhead was nowhere to be seen and Draco’s exhausted brain struggled in vain to make any sense of it. But even as it did, he realized that, strangely enough, he could still feel his presence and it filled him up with peace and dangerous hope…

“Young Master should rest,” said a familiar voice and a pointy face of his house elf swam into his view. The blond just stared at him for a few long moments, his mind running on empty and desperately trying to connect the dots between the beloved image of his redheaded lover and his household servant, but nothing made sense… He couldn’t be in the Manor, could he? How would he get there? He clearly remembered the terrible fight and the sad guilty look in Ron Weasley’s eyes and Ron Weasley did not belong in the Manor… that was just… it was all _wrong_.

Tears of frustration unexpectedly welled in his eyes at the impossible thought that he imagined the whole thing, that there was no redhead for him, not _ever_ , that it was all an elaborate feverish dream and that he now woke up at the Manor more alone and lost than ever before… Had he just imagined the whole affair then? Had he fallen ill? Or had he perhaps only wanted it so?

“He was here,” the house elf spoke unexpectedly. “He wouldn’t want Wheezy to tell young Master, but Wheezy serves the Malfoys, not Weasleys. The man with fiery hair was here and he said it was because he cared. The young Master had given us both a great scare! The redheaded man found him in a right state and got Wheezy to help him. Then he chose to leave, but before he did, he gave something for Wheezy’s young Master to recover and then he was gone very quickly or he would have stayed and he is not ready for that... _yet_.”

With these words he gently picked up the lifeless Draco’s arms and crossed them on his chest… and the blond suddenly _felt_ it. He could not lift his head far enough to see it, but his fingers moved with effort and slowly recognised the contours of the lion-shaped pendant under the curve of his hand. And the magic that radiated from out of the tiny ornament with unassuming appearance was majestic. The little metallic thing immediately went warm under his touch and the good magic all but whispered healing charms from the very edge of its surface, making it buzz, while the light that seemed to be pouring out of it literally made him feel as if it was glowing in his hand. Just touching it made him hopeful and strangely happy.

“He’s gone now?” he somehow managed a whisper, but the house-elf already put a glass with warm liquid onto his lips and he was forced to take a few tiny sips. Only now he realized how very thirsty he was and how his chapped lips burned, but the creature wouldn’t let him take more than a few greedy gulps down his throat.

“Young Master should be careful, otherwise he will not be able to keep his liquid in,” he warned and then continued quietly: “The one with red hair is gone indeed. But the young Master should know he picked well. The redheaded man belongs with him, Wheezy could see that much, though the redheaded man could not. Yet. But he will be back. Young Master only needs to get better that was his only condition. And when he does, then one day young Master will make him stay.”

“ _How_?” Draco’s words barely had enough strength to bubble to the surface. “He says he doesn’t want me anymore.”

But even when the words came out, he knew he didn’t believe them. Perhaps it was the incredible benevolent power of the magical necklace that inspired this crazy irrational belief, or perhaps the fact that Ron had come back after all, that made him feel strangely warm and elated – and stupidly hopeful.

“That man does not know what he wants,” declared Wheezy somewhat begrudgingly. “He pushes young Master away, _crazy crazy man_ , then comes running back and _kidnaps_ Wheezy. Then he proceeds to give Wheezy a whole speech how he can’t stay and then gives away a _magnificent_ present like that - and in the same time he says he wants it _back_ when young Master is better… And in the end he looks ready to cry when he has to leave… _mental_ , that one!”

“Wheezy…” Draco’s voice was parched as if he hasn’t used it for days, not hours, but this... it could not be tolerated. “You will go and smack your head against the wall… three times… this is no way to talk about my…” and he lost the trail of his word. What was the lovely redhead to him anyway? He didn’t want to be his lover anymore… or so he said… and there was never anything…. _promised_ between them, so there really was no formal word to address what they’ve become...

“Love interest?” came a suggestion and the amusement in the voice of a house-elf was hard to ignore.

“Three more smacks,” said Draco impassively. “For meddling into my affairs. And no, I don’t think this is a good expression... there is no... there shouldn’t be any... he was very clear about that... and then my stupid mouth just blurted this... thing out and it was all ruined.... I… _love interest_ indeed,” his voice wandered off and he realized that simply using the word “ _love_ ” in connection with Ron made him feel hopeful and buzzingly happy, bizarrely so. “Love interest will do just fine, thank you very much,” he added after a short while and had a hard time concealing how pleased he was to be able to use it.

“Perhaps young Master prefers “ _beloved_ ”,” the insolent creature proposed quietly and it hit Draco straight in the chest and left him breathless how the word melted perfectly with the fiery image that dominated his mind and ruled his heart.  

“ _Beloved_...”

He didn’t realize he had said it out loud, but it slipped wonderfully smoothly from his tongue into the real world and made his heart beat twice as fast in a sudden rush of suffocating love and sorrow.

“Young Master should sleep it over,” said the house-elf smoothly and began carefully rearranging the linen around him. “There... young Master must drink this cup empty and then rest... rest much more and rest properly, without the nightmares and... those other dreams,” he popped a scarily toothy grin and pushed a large cup filled with transparent, sweetly scented liquid to his mouth.

“All the way,” he urged him, but Draco’s parched lips and dry throat just wouldn’t cooperate and he gave up on it when the glass was still half full.

“Can’t... “ he managed and already felt his eyelids flutter heavily and close as the sleepiness overcame him. But as much as his body wanted to rest, half a glass of sleeping potion wasn’t enough to put his feverish mind to peace. He still absorbed the sounds and the movements from the room though through a thick veil of exhaustion that made them seem as if part of a dream.  

Therefore he couldn’t be sure that he really heard the pop of apparation – though he thought he might have – and as everything was coming to him hazy and stretched out it took him a while to figure out whose subdued voice it was he was hearing.

“How is he? Any change?”

Was he dreaming then? Could it really be...? _Gods, yes!_ He recognised it at last, more instinct than senses, and suddenly his heart felt as if it was about to leap out of his chest. And then the wonderfully cool fingers reached under his shirt and the large comforting hand settled on top of his heart and Draco willed himself to move, struggled to beat the terrible, stupefying effect of that stupid impossible potion he swore he was never going to take again – but it just didn’t work. He was too destroyed and Wheezy knew what he was doing.

“Gods, he is hot! Is he still feverish then? Can’t you do anything for him? This can’t be right, his heart if fluttering like a caged bird!”

“That is only because Ron Weasley is around him. The young Master feels his presence even in his sleep,” explained the calm voice of the house-elf. “Beating is good, the heart could barely be felt before. Young Master woke up earlier, but Wheezy made him go back to sleep. Ron Weasley would not visit again if he found him awake and young Master would never forgive poor Wheezy if Ron Weasley stopped coming.”

“Cheeky bastard,” Ron murmured and after a short pause he continued quietly with a different tone:

“I’ll take over for tonight. Go have your rest, replenish the supplies, do what house-elves do. I’ll stay here with him, rest a little, Godric knows I could use it. Come back in the morning, yeah?”

With a _“hmfp!”_ and a disgruntled _“One would think Wheezy serves the Weasleys!”_ and a soft pop of diapparation the house-elf was gone and the silence lay down heavy onto the abandoned apartment. Then Ron’s long cool fingers disappeared from Draco’s skin and the blond would have whimpered at the loss if he could move. But suddenly, impossibly, but wonderfully, that long strong body slipped into its place by Draco’s side and his presence engulfed him like a giant wave of pure bliss and joy. He lay down on his side, fitting as perfectly as liquid with his lover’s body just like they were meant to be; casually stretching the long arm across the blond’s chest in a gesture that was both possessive and protective at once, and then the soft silken hair tickled his skin where Ron Weasley’s head came to rest in the crook of his neck. He rested for a while like this and Draco thought he had fallen asleep and he silently thanked to whatever deity was running the show for those precious moments in his redhead’s arms. Everything seemed to fall to place with Ron wrapped around him and his breathing aligned with the slow strong moving of the redhead’s chest and he was simply and unforgivably happy.

And then Ron spoke, just above the whisper, as if he was set on telling the blond a bedtime story to lull him to sleep:

“I thought about you all day, you know…. I couldn’t get you out of my mind. It’s like I’m possessed by you... and I can’t even tell you when you’re awake. It was such a blasted long day, so bloody exciting and tiring and endless... Harry’s got a beautiful son – little Jamie, I’m to be his godfather. He cried over him. So vulnerable at last, my Harry... And I couldn’t help it, I used the charm my father told me about and I gave him a piece of me, so he can always have that...” And though Draco’s eyes were closed he could feel the small smile Ron gave, but the sadness in his voice was unmistakeable.

“And Ginny, my baby sister...” the redhead’s voice broke and his breath shuddered and when he spoke again Draco could hear sorrow and anxiety in his voice: “She’s not OK. There were complications and... Merlin, she’s ever so poor... Mom will have a breakdown if she loses another one of us... And I can’t help her, none of us can, I wish I could... I don’t want my little nephew, my Jamie, to grow up without a mom, it damaged Harry to the core... So I made Harry stay by her side and I made him promise he would help.... if only he can. I’m destroying him, little by little, but I can’t help it. I can’t let what we have rip our worlds apart, too many people would get hurt and I don’t want our love to be built on wreckages of other people’s lives. I couldn’t stand it...”

His voice wandered off and Draco wished desperately he could give him some comfort, tell him it’ll be OK, show him, with more actions than words, that he cared – but his limbs would still not move and the edges of his mind were fuzzy as if he was not entirely anchored in reality. And indeed it felt like a dream, having Ron tell him all those little private things, just like he did before he went and ruined it all with his greedy hungry heart, bursting apart with confession of love nobody wanted. And now he was paying for it, paying for it dearly.

And it felt even more like a dream when he felt the soft silken mouth press a tiny wet kiss into the side of his neck and his mind stopped working for a while, when the gentle lips pressed one butterfly kiss after another into the flushed skin and he thought he might indeed have died and gone to heaven...

“Merlin, I miss kissing you...” he heard him blow a warm moist breath straight into his ear and it was the most refined kind of sweet torture that he couldn’t even turn his head and capture his lips with his desperate craving mouth. “I could live a hundred years and never have you again and I’d still miss it...  Gods... after a day like this... you taste like magic and desire, all in one... And what a bloody long day it was... it just wouldn’t end. But every time I closed my eyes to get some rest, all I saw was you... I couldn’t help it... just... you, lying on this big, too big, solitary bed so abandoned... and all I wanted to do was to join you, take you in my arms and rest... _be_ with you. And in the end I did... kill me if I know why I’m here, but this is where I want to be. I feel like I belong... _here_... _with you_.”

He pressed even closer into Draco neck and his arm find a way into the blond hair and long fingers treaded through the silken strands with gentle care. He was silent for a while longer, but Draco didn’t mind. He could lie like this forever, just him and this warm wonderful creature that kept on finding his way back to him in an abandoned apartment that might as well have been at the end of the world. This was their Universe, this was where Draco came to life, he desperately wanted this to be his reality. Just… lying like this and waking up to the heartbeat of the person he so unexpectedly fell in love with.

And suddenly he felt him move and the cold skin of his smooth cheek brushed against his own hot skin and the next thing he knew there were warm soft lips pressing small caressing kisses at the corner of his mouth, slowly, enticingly and gods, he had to know he was not fully asleep, he had to feel his body responding like crazy, just how oblivious was he?!

“God, just the smell of you… I wish I could bottle it and carry it away with me… So bloody sensuous and cool and exclusive all in one… How can you turn me on even in your sleep, how do you do that – making me want to dig myself into you and just stay…? I wish I could explain, I wish it made some sense, I wish I could tell you _why_... but I can’t. It’s how I feel. I’m so glad you’re asleep, cause I could never tell you any of that if you were awake, not without hurting you more… but... _I want you_ , Draco Malfoy. And it’s _wrong_  and _bad_ for me and awfully, _terribly_ bad for you, but I want you. I can’t help wanting you.... wanting to be with you.  

I don’t even know why I’m telling you this, you can’t hear me. But I suppose I always tell you everything, you don’t mind it, you like me the way I come, just the way I come... _So priceless_... I can be anything I want to be with you and it means the world to me. I wish I could tell you what I feel for you, but I can’t... I don’t even know it myself. I just know that I care… more than I should. I can’t afford to keep you in my life, not the way I want to, but… God, I will _miss_ you and I don’t bloody know how to give you up…”

The sweet mouth finally found a way onto his lips and Ron kissed him in earnest and the blond felt desire crush violently again at the edge of the shell of his immobilized body to meet the warm lips taking their goodbye – and couldn’t reach them.

“Please get better, _please_ … I _can’t_ lose you, not like that,” the redhead whispered against his mouth and finally, fucking god, finally, Draco’s god-awful body listened to his numb frantic pleas and released the merciless trap a little when the parched lips moved just a hair’s width, just enough to capture the soft flesh of Ron’s mouth and the blond sucked on it with all the feeble strength he felt trickling back in. Ron moved away hastily, just a fraction, to take a good look at him and he noticed the mouth slightly open and the muscles of the face trying to cooperate.

“ _Shhhh_ …” he quickly put a big palm of his hand on his cheek to relax him, to tell him it was going to be fine and pressed a small kiss into the corner of his mouth. “ _Don’t_ … I’ll stay. Merlin, how do you always make me so distracted?! Don’t exert yourself and I give you my word I’ll stay tonight. I came here to rest and I promise I’m not going anywhere, not until the morning. I need to leave then, I need to go to be there for my poor sister and for Harry and the baby. But tonight… I’m yours. So don’t…. Don’t try too hard. Just rest. And I’ll rest with you.”

The soft mouth gave him one last sweet lingering kiss, as if Ron Weasley found it impossibly hard to let go of him, but then he felt his long muscles relax and the head with silken fiery locks came to rest in the crook of his neck again, flooding his senses with a familiar scent of herbal shampoo. And Draco felt strangely at peace – slowly it swam into his mind how very intimate _this_ , this moment they were sharing, was, perhaps even more intimate than the act of making love. After all - this was Ron, his enigmatic defying lover, who would undoubtedly try to deny that he belonged to him in any way – but who chose _him_ to spend the night with when he felt down and vulnerable as if he was silently acknowledging the intangible stubborn bond between them.

So the blond stopped struggling to wake up his body properly in relaxed his muscles in compliance. If Ron came here to rest, this is what he’d get. And soon enough the possessive arm was back on his chest again to shelter and claim him and with the redhead’s breathing slowly turning steady and his own aligning with it, Draco Malfoy finally slipped into a peaceful dreamless sleep that had more power to heal than any potion his house-elf could come up with.

When he next opened his eyes, with much less effort than before, the greyish dawn was already creeping through the windows and he found himself staring directly into the intensely blue orbs of his redheaded god. As vast as the summer skies, enchanting in their depth and brilliance - they took Draco’s breath away from up close. No words were necessary when Ron Weasley leaned down and captured his lips with his soft dooming mouth and kissed the very breath out of him. His chapped broken lips hurt when the sweet wet tongue swept across them enticingly, but it didn’t matter, nothing did. Ron was here, with him, kissing him, perhaps even…

“ _Last time_ , alright?” whispered redhead feverishly and everything afterwards lost meaning against that. It didn’t matter that he was still weak and tired – his skin seemed to prickle to life and a burst into a million crazy sensations under his seductive touch; it didn’t matter that he was a Malfoy, the proudest they came and they didn’t take scraps – he was ready to beg him for every next kiss when he painted his skin red and trembling with his infernal mouth; it didn’t matter that this was goodbye, a thousand times better than the last attempt and a million times crueller – Draco lived for the moment of sweat and heat under the arch of Ron Weasley’s hot unforgiving body and he was giving every last bit of himself away to this man.

He tried to soak up every moment, remember every angry curse, shameless obscenity, unstoppable moan and quiet word of tenderness and surrender that came out of his ginger devil’s decadent mouth and he didn’t want anything else from life than those moments in the arms of Ron Weasley to go on forever. The redhead was uncommonly gentle, more so than ever before, and this, more than anything, brought home to Draco that Ron was indeed saying goodbye in the only language they ever knew. This was his last chance then; these memories, sweet and unforgettable, were going to be his only companion on a lonely journey still ahead of him – until he would close his eyes for the last time and dream of him.

He should have run to spare himself the pain, but for Draco, there was nowhere to go. He was doomed to a lifetime without the sweet slicing tenderness that cut his very soul open and made him beg feverishly, quietly _“more, Ron, for god’s sake, more”_ ; he was forever to be stuck in the world without the soft heavenly mouth whispering dark obscenities of lust and desire that could make him burst come on their own; there would be no more of the frenzied moans of admiration and stuttered whispers of affection that made his head spin and made him cling onto that devil that rode him with sheer force of a cursed desperate man – he wasn’t going to pass on his last chance to beg his beautiful cruel master to be fucked harder, to be claimed fully, completely until there was none of him left that didn’t belong.

“Ron, Ron, Ron… gods, I love you, Ron, _don’t_ … don’t leave me… please… _pleasebabyplease_ …”

He was dissolving into nothingness under him and he didn’t even care as the wonderful leaking shaft raged inside him, making him see stars and the blasphemous wet mouth licked every bit of naked skin it could find, all the time hissing dangerously, with impotent anger and mad despair:

“Goddammit, stop begging… stop begging, you beautiful blond slut, can’t you see… can’t you see, my gorgeous silver-eyed snake, I’ve already fallen for you… I’ve fallen for your decadent flawless body… I’ve fallen for your obnoxious obedient mouth whispering all the secrets of your heart… and Merlin help me, I’ve fallen for this very heart… I want to _keep_ you… gods, how very much I want to keep you… you have no idea… I’ve never wanted anything in my life more than I want to hold on to you… to be buried inside you again… and feel you whimper your surrender under me… feel your crazy heart beat against my skin as your mouth begs me to stay, to fuck you harder, to own you… Draco!!! Fuck - my love…”

The howl that tore out of Ron’s mouth as he shoved them both down the pitfall of ecstasy was filled with hurt and impossible completion and as he watched the young man underneath him arch like a bow with his name dying on his lips, eyes already in a domain of pure bliss and nothingness as the pearly liquid flooded his flawless flushed skin, the words swam to his mouth along with recognition and without as much as a warning:

“I know what this is now… Merlin, help me, I’m…. _Christ, no_ …”

He collapsed onto the young man underneath him and closed his eyes to regain some sense of a different reality in which he was not head over heels in love with Draco Malfoy, but nothing come to meet him in the darkness behind his eyelids; nothing but a frantic beating of his heart screaming how badly he had fallen for the beautiful blond, who ravaged his life, lead him astray and destroyed everything he thought he knew about himself. It scared him to the bone, that feeling, that his heart could possibly be beating for another person, when he was so convinced he had already given it away… but he could lie to himself no longer: he had fallen for Draco Malfoy and fallen spectacularly.

And if he couldn’t lie to himself about it, perhaps he could find a way to lie to him. _He had to try_. Harry was making all the sacrifices, he might as well put his own cross on the shoulders bravely. He couldn’t let him know. Except in that moment the long fingers caressed his cheek lovingly and he opened his eyes to see what this was all about and the blond kissed him at the corner of his mouth a bit breathless, and at the same time the adept fingers put Harry’s necklace around his neck and the man in his arms said quietly:

“For your sister… so she can get better. It helped me… perhaps it can do something for her.”

His beauty in this moment was intoxicating and Ron was losing himself inside the silver unfathomable eyes. This was... he was losing his footing, losing his mind, rapidly losing his resolve... as he had already lost his heart.

With the last attempt to hold on to his destiny the redhead tore from his embrace abruptly as if he’d been stung and tried to ignore the hurt that tainted the lovely eyes and the despair that settled at the corner of the tightly pressed mouth, trying its best not to scream. He put on his clothes as fast as he could and tried to think different thoughts, other thoughts, thoughts that didn’t painfully knock into words like “ _Draco_ ” and “ _love_ ” and “ _without_ ”. But he didn’t have it in him to leave without goodbye. He paid him one last look before he disapparated – and that was enough. He had doomed himself.

“I know what this is now… what I feel for you,” his stupid mindless mouth blurted out without his consent and his voice was ragged with held back feelings. Gods, this was wrong and he knew he shouldn’t… but he couldn’t, just couldn’t leave him without letting him know how much he had come to mean to him. “It’s love,” he said gently and upon seeing the light and hope flood the silver eyes, he added with a quiet voice, soaked with misery: “Our beautiful dark love. Love from the shadows. Cursed, it seems. Still - I wish more than anything I could give it to you. _If only_ …”

His voice broke and disapparated and the devastation he left in his wake was absolute. The house-elf had come back to a broken man, staring in front of him madly and whispering: “He loves me. He does. Why, _why_ did he go, then?!”


	39. In search of light amidst the shadows

_But in this heart of darkness_

_Our hope lies lost and torn_

_All flame like love is fleeting_

_When there's no hope anymore…_

Apocalyptica, Hope vol. 2

 

PRESENT DAY

Still as a statue, Draco found himself quietly observing the surreal scenery he had encountered, when he apparated at the edge of the public park where he hoped to find Ron. The venue was submerged in shadows as it would be at this time of the year at this hour of the evening – except it wasn’t the quiet darkness of a day gone to rest; it was buzzing with voices instead, clatter of glass and bustle of laughter coming from a large crowd of people gathered around a massive bonfire glowing in their midst, illuminating the faces of those closer to the fire to the point of recognition and keeping the shadow-cast spectators at bay with magnificent heat. Muggles were… _strange_ , Draco thought. He had no idea what the bizarre habit was all about and though it was reminiscent of Samhain - that one has passed days ago already, so this… _gathering_ s could not have had anything to do with the celebration of all things pagan and magical.

But strangely enough - it still touched him deeply that he should come looking for his absolution, resolve, _whatever_ … whatever he was hoping to get in the midst of fire and shadows. Because this is what his life came down to in the last month or so. Fire and shadows. Silken flames of Ron Weasley’s fiery hair that slowly burnt his heart from inside… and shadows that once, an eternity ago, gave birth to their love and to which this precious fragile emotion was expelled to, to be forever buried and forgotten by Ron’s iron will alone.

“Fire and shadows,” he whispered - and he couldn’t bear it anymore.

It was almost a month since Ron abandoned him and it was the single most agonizing month of his existence. After the redhead had left so abruptly, with a cruel and sweet recognition still hanging in the air, Draco all but shattered. Left without a single thing to hold onto, even the absence of so small an item as the magical necklace with its benevolent healing power pushed him further down the pit of misery and he fell prey to numbness and depression that weighed him down like a millstone around his neck.

If it wasn’t for Wheezy, who fussed over him unrelenting, making sure he had everything he needed to recover physically, and grumpily delivering news of the outside world, he would have completely lost touch with reality around him. But luckily this one house-elf wasn’t the usual meek representative of the breed – he was son of Dobby, the famous free elf, practically a rebel - and he had a reputation to live up to! And he was determined that he will see his young Master better – and let it take what it may!

So he took care of him, fed him, changed his clothes, washed him and kept him company just the way he did ever since he was assigned to the pale reserved boy all those years ago. And he scolded him and sat by his bed; told him stories of old and those of his childhood that had a hidden message in the end – usually something alike “ _time heals all wounds_ ”, no surprise there! – and after he saw that it was no use if he could not even bring his young Master out of his stupor, he begrudgingly retorted to the last resort and started dropping bits of news that contained the name of “Weasley” in this form or another. He couldn’t very well say where he got them from not to upset the dishevelled young Master further, but his silent feathered ally Cassiopeia took off with a message and returned with a scroll attached to its leg every evening. _Faithfully so_. Every evening with no exception.

And though Wheezy couldn’t very well tell his Master that the man on the other side of those messages cared, he tried to soften his misery and heal his malady with the bits of news the scrolls contained. Ginny Weasley Potter was slowly getting better and would be leaving St. Mungo’s shortly. Rita Skeeter tried to get an exclusive picture of the Harry Potter’s heir but was charmed into a fly by perpetrators unknown and left in a jar for a couple of days until one of the medical staff opened it in emergency circumstances to let a patient vomit in it. Harry Potter took a week off from teaching to take care of his son while his wife was still recovering and was reportedly head over heels in love with the new addition to his family. Ron Weasley – who never left the side of his best mate, which Wheezy tactfully omitted from his information – would be returning to school mid October now that a grave family tragedy has been avoided.

And it was this last news that finally woke up the blond from his numbness. Just to see him… To _see_ him, what wouldn’t he give? He _needed_ his Ron, something inside him hurt and felt crippled when he could have none of him and just the thought of a _possibility_ that he would get to see him again... perhaps rest his eyes in a serenity of the pretty freckled face with that sinful sensuous mouth that sent his mind straight to the gutter... drink in the vivid vibrant colours of the magical creature that once belonged to him, if only for a few hours – just a _chance_ of that stirred Draco from his misery forcefully and made him take a torturous step, and the next one and then another, on the road to recovery.

When he finally got out of bed almost a week after he first heard the news that Ron was returning to Hogwarts, his legs barely held him. He was weak and dreadfully pale and so damn tired, but his eyes were aflame with a feverish fire and determination when he stubbornly repeated that he indeed wanted to return to school, because _“he had missed enough already and could not afford a single day of absence lest he be dreadfully behind”_.

House-elf pressed his mouth together not to express his feelings in the face of such obstinacy… and blind love… and begrudgingly gave his consent with a reservation that the young Master come home every night with no exceptions until he’s properly better – or Wheezy would be forced to inform the young Master’s mother of the unfortunate situation. It was shameless blackmail, but Wheezy was rather unscrupulous in his care for his young Master and he knew him far too well not to be able to press just the right buttons to get what he wanted.

And – who would have said? – the young Master was prepared to be _reasonable_ for once – or, as one could argue, _turned completely irrational_ in his desire to fall under the redheaded man’s spell once again – but perhaps that was not the worst of options, Wheezy admitted to himself with somewhat heavy heart. It was certainly preferable to seeing the young Master stare in front of himself day in – day out, submerged in thoughts that were making him miserable.

So to Hogwarts it was and Draco went there with a fluttering heart and feverish determination that he could do this. He was a Malfoy, wasn’t he, they were masters of all things cool and composed and he was just going back there to pursue his education good and proper and he was going to –

Whatever he was going to do, melted like butter in a hot pan at the first sight of the tall figure and impossibly blue eyes that caught on his face and kept on staring straight at him when he slowly made his way through the classroom. He barely made it to his desk, his resolve melting along with his knees and the crazy unforgivable love knocking like tidal waves at the inside of his chest. God, was he ever so _gorgeous_! How could he forget!? At that point it had been two weeks since he last saw him and he was soaking up his image with all his painfully awaken senses, like a man starved and deprived of all things good and right.

His head was nothing but a mess of disconnected pleas - “ _gods, please don’t let him look away, not just yet, just a moment longer!_ ”- floating like trapped butterflies against the background of a terrifying recognition how dreadfully infatuated and irrevocably addicted to Ron Weasley he had become. He couldn’t take his eyes off the pale freckled face he that haunted him day and night and he was afraid to open his mouth to let any of his desperate need and want slip out in the open. Completely dazed and on the very edge of spilling how very vulnerable he had become, he remained silent right until the end of the classes to somehow contain the worst of the damage done by a single look from those radiant blue eyes.

Ron realized his mistake soon, too soon, and from a single hard press of his mouth Draco guessed it won’t happen again as long as the redhead could help it. And his heart sunk. With a good reason, it seemed, because since then Ron appeared to be resolutely set on killing what little hope Draco might have brought along that they could salvage what Ron called their beautiful dark love, their short-lived cursed love from the shadows. And it was destroying the blond bit by bit.

The redhead put conscious effort into carefully avoiding his eyes, stubbornly paying attention to everyone and everything but to his beautiful blond ex-lover and for the most part he simply tried to pretend Draco didn’t exist. He no longer engaged him in playful prickly taunting, that used to make him put all his Malfoyian eloquence and acid sarcasm to work to outsmart him and earn himself a quiet look of admiration and amusement. All the slow causal smiles that had the power to light up Draco’s days and made him forget his name with their disarming brilliance were now directed at someone else. The redhead wouldn’t look at him, he wouldn’t talk to him, he wouldn’t smile at him and above all – he made sure he was never _ever_ left alone with him.

Not that this last part was hard, mind you, given a proper legion of Ron’s admirers, who followed him everywhere and of whom Draco just wanted to hex the graceful limbs and sweet tongues off… And then there was Potter. If Draco would be willing to delude himself that having a baby would somehow change or diminish Potter’s affection for Ron Weasley, he would have been sorely disappointed. The Saviour was all but glued to his best mate and lover whenever he could manage, he took his lunch with him regularly, sitting on the lawn of Hogwarts and chatting all the while - and the echo of their occasional laughter prickled Draco’s ears like metallic pins, because he _so very much_ wanted to be the one sprawled on the green expanse of grass, staring at the skies of Ron Weasley’s heavenly eyes. But he knew that even an attempt of it would cost him dearly. Potter wasn’t sharing and it seemed as if he grew more possessive by the day, jealously shooting lightning bolts from the green eyes at whomever his best mate seemed to be bestowing too much attention upon.

All in all it was enough to drive a saint mad and for someone as proud, passionate and in love as Draco Malfoy was - it was a road to destruction. Sometimes he literally felt as if he was falling apart and dissolving into nothingness at the feet of one Ronald Weasley and his resolute ex-lover, so dead-set on staying on a path of his decision, wouldn’t even notice. He felt disconnected, agitated and strangely numb to all the more mundane aspects of his existence like sleep and food – if it wasn’t for Wheezy he would have perished. At times his impotent anger and frustration surged so unexpectedly that he was made breathless by the sudden outburst of pain – in those moments it felt as if his whole being was sliding against the edge of a sharp blade and he was being sliced open and bleeding in everyone’s view. He sometimes wondered madly, feverishly if one could die of unrequited love, cause he felt as if he was going to – there was no way he could hide for much longer how very ravaged on the inside he had become.

With such an unfathomable wilderness of feelings and vulnerability to mask, the only way for him to survive was to put on a display of cold contempt, stubborn defiance and haughtiness he was born into. More often than not he clung onto the façade of disdain and disinterest with a sheer despair of a man who had nothing to lose for it was sometimes the only thing that kept him going through the day. He was rude and abrupt to his school-mates, rejected all attempts at making acquaintances with a sneer and a cutting remark and soon enough he was isolated and as unpopular as one could get with the school-mates and teachers alike.

But perhaps he could have learned to live with it and accept the fact that Ron Weasley was never going to be his again; perhaps he could have finally given up and run away to lick his wounds in private, far away from the cruel man tearing him apart… if it wasn’t for those rare occasions that knocked the breath out of him and melted what was left of his rational brain, making him hang on to a hope of another such event with determination of a mad man: the few priceless moments when Ron’s control slipped and a lustre of feeling he held for the blonde came shining through those sapphire eyes. Ron remembered each and every one of those glorious moments and guarded the memories of them as if they were his greatest treasure. Two of them, just a couple in the space of two weeks since his return, one innocent and sweet, the other mind-fucking-blowing and heart-wrenching in its dark luxury.

There was this one time, the first time, when he was provokingly asked by an unusually prickly Professor Flitwick to demonstrate one of the more complicated spells from their Advanced level Charms book they have not learnt about yet – _they_ haven’t, but _he_ had - and when he did so impeccably with seemingly practiced ease, stunning the old wizard’s mouth shut, he sat down strangely pleased and irritated all in one that he should be challenged so…

And then, right then, in the middle of the silence in which one could hear a needle drop, there came a sound of solitary clapping and when lift his head up abruptly in a sudden surge of mad hope – they were there: the impossibly blue eyes were upon him, glued to his face with strange hungry intensity, along with the world's most god-sexy smile full of admiration and challenge and he was left without a functioning brain while the classroom slowly filled with the sound of the many other clapping hands and he just stared and stared, drowning, feeding like a starved man on the light and love he couldn't imagine ever living without. God, was he ever so in love with him! Everything faded in the face of intoxicating happiness bubbling inside him when he could finally feel the beautiful face staring straight back at him and he didn’t even care if everyone could read it straight off his face, how very smitten he was.

This was the first chip that came off Ron Weasley’s composed façade, a glimpse of that elusive, yet resilient monster called love, still hiding inside those unfathomable eyes for him - and he could have died in the sweetness of these moments, bursting his heart open with joy and elation. This was what he came here for, this was what made it worth to him to come back and keep on coming back even if he got kicked in the teeth and ignored nine times out of ten.

He could have murdered the tiny Flitwick who finally regained his senses enough to interrupt the infectious wave of clapping by climbing on the chair and casting a _Sonorus!_ on himself to tell them to calm down and how very inappropriate this was and of course, what a splendid display of knowledge by Mr. Malfoy! But the only thing that mattered to Draco was that the wonderful brilliant eyes slipped off his face and focused on Ron’s hands twitching nervously in front of him and suddenly the pretty face closed up like a shell and the only thing still seeping through the wonderful blue pools was sadness, worry and regret. And all light seemed to have left the classroom and this world.

He tried cornering him after the class, his heart in his throat as he caught up with his long stride - but he never made it past: _“What was that all about?”_

Without stopping in his track, Ron hissed: “ _Don’t, Malfoy._..” and his heart effectively froze in his chest and it would have surely shattered if Ron didn’t halt abruptly as if he could feel the surge of pain hit him in his back and didn’t have it in him to run. Draco could see his shoulders slump as if he was visibly defeated, but then he slowly turned around and looked straight at Draco’s face that must have spelled out to just about anyone observing how very hurt he was. And that look, a mixture of misery, desire and apology, stopped the very breath in the blond's chest:

“Don’t, Draco,” the redhead said softly. “I can’t do this... you have to know... I miss you so.”

And he was gone before Draco could pick up the marbles of his melted brain off the floor and he couldn’t remember where was and probably not even his own name as he wandered the corridors of Hogwarts completely off his rocker until the shocked McGonagall all but threw him out for the night. And the next day it was back to averted eyes and complete ignorance of his existence.

And then there was that _other_ time, just two days ago; that god-awful time after the end of classes when a bunch of his own Slytherins cornered him in a poorly-lit corridor after he had dished out a particularly snarky remark to one of their house-peers that made the girl run away in tears. They were younger than him, of course, still very much children, but the combined bulk of them hid that very well. He already drew his wand and knew he could probably deal with most of them if he really needed to defend his own life and it wouldn’t have mattered how badly he hurt them – but he didn’t have the luxury of not caring, not if he wanted to continue his schooling, and he also knew that they are not going to have the same reservations about him.

The tall, somewhat brutish-looking muscular boy, who seemed to have taken on the position of a leader, was the first to hiss at him maliciously:

“We don’t go against our own, Malfoy! Just who do you think you are!? Perhaps it’s time we teach you a lesson: you’re no longer _the prince_ around here, you posh twat! Dark mark won’t protect you now – if there even is one!” he smirked arrogantly to the background of ugly sneers and derogatory laughter.

But Draco’s grey eyes instantly went dark, almost anthracite, and without another word he stashed his wand in its holster and slipped off his outer robe. In full view of confused eyes and exchanged surprised glances he rolled up the sleeve of his pristine white shirt and stretched out his arm. Against the alabaster skin of the forehand the shocking image of the Dark Mark glowed with its own malignant power and in the flickering light of the torches it seemed to jump at them with terrifying aggression. It had them all gasp in unison and move a step away as one.

“Is this what you were hoping to see?” he asked softly, but there was no mistaking the underlying cold rage in his voice. “This was _forced_ upon me when I was younger than you. My father was bullied into holding my arm still and my own mad aunt held my mother at wand-point when the Dark Lord put it upon me _in person_. It hurt so much I passed out and to this day I can still feel it eating at my nerves. And how would you like to come home and find one like that hanging above it maliciously, with nothing but corpses in its wake? _This_ is what I was forced to cast time and time again to prove my allegiance - or perish. What would you have done? Are you as strong as you think you are? Would you have said _"no"_ to the Dark Lord when he threatened to ruin everything you hold dear if you don’t yield and do his bidding?” he moved a step closer towards a visibly paled boy that took another step backwards.

He stopped dead in his track, not willing to be more menacing than he already was and said firmly, with quiet anger still underlining every word he uttered: “I did what I had to do – but not without consequences to myself. Therefore excuse me if I refuse to engage in the frivolities of your care-free life. I ask nothing of you, but to be left alone, but if you ever insist on involving me in your petty attempts to establish your leadership over your peers, then I’m afraid you won’t leave me any other choice than to use whatever I have learnt about protecting myself. But who knows? You could be better than me. You could be the next prodigy, like Potter! Would you care to _try_ , then?” he proposed quietly, acidly, and his wand was at the boy’s temple before anyone even blinked.  

Hi unfortunate would-be opponent was ashen pale at the end of Draco’s wand and his peers have quietly disappeared into the dark corridor one by one, clearly scared out of their wits, some perhaps eager to engage help from the nearest teacher.

“Draco!” came a soft dark voice from the end of the corridor and it was all the blond could do not to let his wand clatter to the floor. The panic that grabbed him by the neck was absolute. Ron has _never_ , _ever_ seen his Dark Mark before; he had made sure of that, glamouring it carefully for weeks on end just to avoid the slightest possibility of the Gryffindor cringing away from him in disgust. And now he was approaching down the corridor, his eyes as big and blue as they were ever going to get, dead set on the branded defiled skin and Draco thought he would die of a sudden rush of shame, frustration and despair. That _he_ should see him like this... Threatening mere kids with the very thing that made him despise himself even after all these years... If there was one way to make Ron see he made a right decision by running away from the Death Eater spawn, this was it, Draco was sure of it. And the narrow corridor seemed to be crushing in, squeezing the very breath out of him.

“Put your wand down, Draco,” Ron spoke softly when he reached them and the blond needn’t be told twice. In that moment he would have welcomed any chance to hide his shame and move his blasted exposed arm out of sight, even if it meant submitting himself to the danger of being attacked. He put his wand back in its holster hastily, while Ron stopped right in front of him and with the Dark Mark no longer in plain sight, he finally lifted his stunned eyes onto the Slytherin’s face. And the lack of understanding the blond could read in those unfathomable pools of brilliance had Draco’s muscles trembling with the sheer effort to keep himself standing up and he knew if he had to pick up the wand now, there was no way he could put it to any purpose. If only he could explain...

But Ron’s eyes were no longer on him, he merely looked at the shivering stone-pale youth pressing so close into the wall it looked as if he wanted to merge with it and become invisible – and said quietly, dispassionately, as if he was merely giving instructions:

“Get out of here… Now. _Now_ , _I said now, goddammit_ , while you still have all your limbs intact, you brainless brick!!” he hissed, his Weasley temper finally erupting when he was not immediately obeyed and the Slytherin took off as if Hungarian Horntail was on his heels. “And tell your nest of snakes to choose your opponents more carefully, you worthless piece of cowardly shit!” Ron howled behind him for good measure and Draco thought he heard the boy whimper.

All of the sudden he was left alone with Ron Weasley and what would have been his ultimate dream just an hour ago, had turned into a nightmare. His heart was pumping blood so wildly he was beginning to see everything blurred and his over-heated brain frantically sought for solution, explanation, something, _anything_ that would stop Ron from pouring out his disgust on him. His knees no longer seemed willing to cooperate and he welcomed it silently, when Ron pushed him against the wall of a dark secluded corner, albeit with no excess force.

And without ever moving his eyes away from the pale thin face with huge silver eyes, he captured his arm in his hands and said quietly:

“You never told me… you never showed me. Why did you hide it from me?”

And Draco found out he couldn’t lie. Not when he was pressed against that massive warm body that felt in no way menacing, only every bit like protection and care; not when he was merely inches away from that strong chest with that drumming heart he wanted to touch and lean onto and ask for; not when he was staring close up into those impossibly blue eyes he fell in love with, that were now strangely free of anger, just full of hurt and something alike compassion.

“I didn’t want to lose you,” he confessed, his voice barely above the whisper and his throat almost tied shut by a multitude of rushing emotions. “I would’ve done anything not to lose you,” he blurted out next without really wanting to because it was too much like begging and he was a Malfoy and they _didn’t_ beg and this was over and –

“And little good it did me, in the end I did anyway…” slipped out of his mouth in a harsh bitter voice and he could no longer take reality head on, so he closed his eyes shut and - _god_ , this was all wrong! He felt tears of frustration and crazy unrequited love pool at the bottom of his eyes and, Merlin, he wasn’t going to _cry_ now, was he, he needed to do something, _anything_ to avoid this, if only his stupid fried brain would cooperate _for once_ and not only melt in that ungodly body heat that spelled love and happiness and all the goddamn paradise lost to him and –

They felt like a dream at first, moist and smooth and incredibly gentle; softly wrapping around his wrist in overwhelming tenderness, inducing a sweet heavy low-buzzing charge, leaving a trail of wetness, heat and desire in their wake. And there they came again, charging slowly at the transparent sensitive skin of his wrist, those sweet poisonous lips he could distinguish from a million others because no one, _no-fucking-one person_ in this world kissed like Ronald Weasley… with luxurious care and abandon and slickness of the godlike tongue, evoking that terrible slow burning need… so very loving… so incredibly erotic…

“How could you think I’d hate you…” came a warm dark voice, “…for something you had no hand in?” the redhead whispered into his skin, while the soft mouth suddenly picked up a travel up and down his forearm, kissing and licking without stopping, leaving a trail of love and absolution across the abused skin and everywhere around it as if the Dark Mark was insignificant, as if it wasn’t even there. “You were just a child… we were all just kids… sometimes… _most_ times just at the wrong place at the wrong time… wrong family… I’ve got my own scars from that blasted war… and I never once saw you cringe away from them.”

The surge of relief hit Draco like a freight-train and he nearly crushed under the onslaught of a million contradicting emotions and overwhelming sensations. He felt like crying as much as he felt like hugging him stupid and once again, he couldn’t think straight with Ron present, he never could... And now all of his senses were being assaulted by the impossible heart-melting gentleness and he simply drowned in a flood of affection he was so incredibly starved of.

He was being caressed gently, possessively and the very thought of that warm demanding mouth upon him sent a shivering wave of heat and desire rushing up and down his body into the every last tingling neuron and when he a felt a violent surge of blood hit him between the legs, he was done in. In a short pocket of time, filled to the brim with sheer presence of the passionate devoted redhead and his mind-numbing tenderness, he had become painfully hard and he was somehow, impossibly, getting even harder when the wonderful decadent lips just wouldn’t let go…

“This mark… this isn’t you…” whispered Ron heatedly, lovingly, with conviction and passion and raw hungry need. “This is them… their evil, their hatred… the evil and the hatred we defeated… you helped… your mother helped… how could this define you? This… is you… warm and alive and trembling under my hand… this is you… under my mouth… the real you… _mine_ …”

 “Ron…” he exhaled the beloved name, breath hitched to the point of panting and he had to see him, he had to doom himself some more, entirely, completely, he couldn’t live without. He opened his eyes and soaked up the revered image of him, heart beating madly as if it was feeding on the beloved warmth he almost gave up hope to ever feel again. With his eyes closed and long auburn eyelashes casting an impossible long shadow down the pale freckled lips, Ron was a piece of poetry, written for no one but Draco alone. He was so beautiful it hurt; the perfection of his man, his chosen one, so intense, it hurt somewhere in the darkest pit of his core and he let out a pained moan, a hiss-turned-sob, otherwise his heart would have exploded under all the compressed emotion. And Ron opened his hypnotic eyes in slow motion, as if under a spell, his pupils so dilated that nothing remained of the blue brilliance but a crystal ring around the black - and then he let his eyelids sink again and sunk his teeth into the sensitive flesh just under the edge of pain and Draco was unable to hold back a cry – the surge of lust was so intense he almost came on the spot.

But the redhead wasn’t done with him yet. The long fingers held his wrist captive, gently, but unrelenting, and as the wet hot tongue licked slow broad strokes across the damaged skin the passionate, neglected blond couldn’t hold back any longer. With a cry of defeat he pressed his body against his lover’s massive frame, pinning him so mercilessly against the wall, and began sliding against it desperately, his hips moving with helpless unstoppable needy rhythm that sent shivers of ecstatic tension to the very edge of his skin and made him feel as if he was spiralling fast-forward into the darkest pit of his own private heavenhell of uncontrollable lust and bliss. And Ron didn’t stop him. He didn’t move away, he didn’t stop him, he didn’t even try to push him away. He moaned his name instead, quietly, involuntarily, like a curse, and it was the sweetest sound of surrender Draco Malfoy had ever heard.

“Draco… God… beautiful… I can’t… I miss you…” he heard him whisper a helpless confession and it was aphrodisiac without comparison to know that their incredible magic was still there, unbeatable, resilient and as strong as ever.

“Ron… please…” the blond finally gave in and begged in a ragged voice, impossibly tense, nerves stretched and itching and crazed with desire, as the world was rapidly disappearing around him, focusing entirely onto the nearly bursting patch of confined flesh, rubbing in tiny circles like a bitch in heat against the hot hard body of his god pressing into him, providing heavenly friction and burning him alive from inside out. And Ron gave into him like he always did when the beautiful haughty blond begged him to.

“Sweet Godric… no, oh no… god, love… the smell of you… that fucking poisonous scent of your skin I can’t get out of my system… If only you knew…” the redhead whispered feverishly, defeatedly, the silken hair suddenly tickling the crook of his neck and what was left of Draco melted under the decadent supple mouth and hot breath of his lover’s needy groan caressing his neck and his ear. But Ron was just as gone as he was.

“I miss it so… oh, motherfuck, how I want it…  I miss the way you smell on me in the morning, my beautiful blond prince, that sweet intoxicating smell of your sweat and that fucking expensive soap you use… so addictive.. I wank to it every day… every bloody day… to that fucking priceless, fucking magical shirt you gave me… I took it with me before I left you, you know… I stole it from you, cause it smells of you and I couldn’t give you up, not without taking a piece of you with me… I just have to close my eyes and I see your wonderful elegant fingers doing and undoing the buttons… the silver glow of them reflecting in your eyes… the way you looked at me… as if I was the main prize… the way your fingers sank behind the edge of it when I asked you to take it off, the way you wanted me… the way I could _smell_ you wanting me… Sweet Merlin, I’m fucked up… you fucked me up… stop me, please stop me… cause I can’t stop myself…”

“ _No, Ron_ … please don’t… gods… please don’t stop… just one more… _just once_ … you’re ripping me apart… fucking apart… you need to give me something… _anything_ … baby… please… I come here every day… slashing myself open every day, time and time again… just for a chance… you’d look at me… and I would somehow know that you still remember me, remember us… how we used to be… and I could go home and dream of you… I only ever sleep right when I dream of you… please, don’t take that away… not today… _tomorrow_ … tomorrow you can go back to ignoring me and hurting me and killing me with your smiles, meant for another… but not today… please give me today, Ron… just one day, today… please don’t go, I need your love, I need it so, goddammit…”

Draco was stripped down, dissolved to his very core, bursting by the seams with dreadful roaring need and impossible desire, blabbing incoherently, begging with no shame - but it was worth it, the prize was _so_ worth it and he didn’t care. As long as he got his beautiful passionate redhead, if only for a day, for an hour, a few stolen minutes pressed against the wall in the dark corridor of the ancient school, breathing with secrets – if only he could call himself his own for once more, just once more, one more time…

“Don’t, gorgeous… don’t beg for something that’s already yours,” he heard him whisper just before his words got lost in the clash of their mouths and a muffled scream the blond gave said more than any words ever could of how bloody much, how exquisitely his deepest darkest desires were met, when the soft decadent tongue ravaged him from the inside and licked at his core like hellfire. But that wasn’t enough and he needed more, forever more, so much more; needed him all over his body and inside, god if only he could have him inside, plunging ahead with full brutal force and no mercy, hurting him into screams and hopeless surrender, so he would remember for days that the his redheaded god was part of him, taking what was ever only his...

And Ron knew. He felt the echo of his lover’s need and damaged love screaming bloody murder inside his own body and soul and he pressed his lips together to keep back a cry at the bitter-sweetness of the moment, because he knew just how impossible this was... and decided to give him what little he could, to make him get there anyhow. He wasn’t going to hold back any longer.

“I want to tear your robes to shreds and fuck you raw, you beautiful devil’s work…” he hissed in a dark menacing voice through gritted teeth and the desire behind it was Draco’s undoing. “The things I want to do to you… here, against the wall, in everyone’s view…. I want to pound you into this old building until it shakes and crumbles and the fucking stones beg for mercy together with you… give it to you the way you love it, straight into that very spot inside you that makes your nipples hard… and your cock leak… and you scream my name… over and over again… I want to fuck you good… and proper… until you can’t take anymore and there’s my come pouring out of you in streams… seeping down your delicious raw arse, out of your very pores, cause you’re so full… full of me… you have no idea what you do to me… you made me betray everything I am, made me lie to my Harry and my wife and fuck all, I would do it all for you, cause you’re worth it, you’re so fucking worth it, Draco… beautiful… come now, baby, let me see you come...”

Just a whispered spell and a touch of adept fingers over a massive strained bulge in Draco’s pants was enough and suddenly there was naked swollen flesh pushing into the tight hot confine of Ron’s big hands and – thank _fuck_ for wandless magic, was the last faint thought Draco had, before his scream exploded straight into Ron’s mouth and the long skilled fingers pulled at his begging leaking cock once, twice, three times and it was all it took: he was coming like a rush of stormwater bursting through the dam, the geyser of his come shooting through Ron’s fingers as the redhead greedily ate his gasping yelps and curses and god-awful broken confessions of love right out of his mouth - and it was heaven… heaven he thought he’d never have again.

It was all too much for him as he collapsed panting and all but sobbing against the wall of muscle that was Ron Weasley and just wrapped his fingers around his neck and held on for dear life. And Ron held him close and whispered a million of sweet little nothings until he was better and calmer and could at least think how very happy he was inside these arms and _goddeargodplease_ , don’t let it end just yet...

“What now?” he asked him in a raw, ragged voice, his blond head still pressed onto the muscled chest, on top of that beating heart he couldn’t let go.

But Ron was silent and the blond could almost feel the anguish crashing against him from the massive chest as the redhead kissed him most tenderly on the temple and exhaled slowly.

“I don’t know,” he said quietly and the misery breathed like fire-wind through his defeated voice. “I can’t... you know we can’t have that... you know it...”

“Why!?” Draco responded with rash unexpected violence, tearing his head forcefully from the addictive body-heat and staring straight into the eyes of blue with the desperation of a man who just went through hell and back and had nothing to lose and everything to gain. “Why not?! Why, Ron?! What’s so hard about making it work? We made it work before and it’s not like we can plan it to perfection. Let’s just take it one step at the time, improvise a little...”

“No... please don’t do this, we can’t,” Ron said quietly, almost begging. “It was hard enough to give you up one time, don’t make me do it again. I’m so fucking torn and confused and so fucking... no, I can’t, we can’t...”

“But why!? At least tell me why, you beautiful bastard, and stop messing with me!” erupted Draco as his Black rage hit with brutal force. “Why won’t you have me, when you made me fall for you and now I’m so fucking head over heels in love with you that I can’t even breathe right ... – and you clearly have feelings for me, you must have, I _felt_ it, gods, I could almost feel your heart devouring me  - and now you say you won’t have me and you want to run away again and pretend this didn’t happen – why!? Ron, why!?”

“Because this is wrong, alright?!” the redhead finally lashed out and the despair ravaging his insides was impossible to miss. “This is wrong and we’ll be hurting everyone and lying to everyone and cheating and pretending and I don’t want this for the love I have for you, alright?!” he shouted with his deep charged voice and Draco’s breath stopped dead in his chest. “I’d rather have nothing than give you something so messed up and crippled, when you’re worth so much more. I’d love to see you get it all, Draco,” he stared straight into his eyes, clearly miserable, but determined.

“You’re worth it all, someone you can hold your hands with, not in the shadows, but out in the open, someone you can run to without having to hide it, someone you can share your life with and have a future with, someone to give you children and make you cry with pride and love, just like Harry did when he got a son. Someone... better. Someone more and better and all yours. Not this, what I am, what little I have to give. It shouldn’t be enough for you, you shouldn’t have to accept it. It’s hard now – but it’ll get better. You’ll meet someone, someone good and right and proper for you, someone to soothe your wounds and jumpstart your life to a new level, give you all, the way I can’t and...”

“Ron! Are you here, mate?”

The voice that came from just around the corner drained all the blood off Draco’s face and turned his expression to one of bloody murder. And Ron just looked sad.

“And here’s another answer to your “ _why_ ”...” he said in a quiet whisper, before he pressed Draco into the wall gently and threw a disillusionment charm over him in one fluid motion as if he was prepared this would happen at some point anyhow. He stepped into the light of the torches and from the closed expression on his face no one would have guessed what an emotional turmoil he had just put himself through.

“Oh, there you are...” Harry’s relief was obvious when he set eyes on his best mate and saw him unharmed. “I came as soon as I heard that bloody Malfoy was causing trouble again. And to have you involved... Bloody arrogant git! There are complaints to his behaviour flying in from left and right. I’m this close to propose his enrollment reconsidered by McGonagall! Where is the bastard?!”

Harry’s voice was dark and fuming and it was not that hard to discern that there was more fuelling his anger than a mere disciplinary misdemeanour of the unpopular Slytherin. But sudden darkness crept into Ron’s eyes as well and Draco, watching them from his hiding place, tense and alert, with boiling wrath flowing through his veins, didn’t miss a sudden flash of annoyance, even anger crossing his pretty face.

“I imagine he’s hiding somewhere,” Ron replied dryly to his best mate’s question and there it was again, a flicker of that dark emotion the blond couldn’t quite figure out. “More so, because he knew he’d be falsely accused of wrong-doing and everyone will be eager to ignore his side of the story,” he said acidly and in a sudden surge of anger he continued with a clear and hard voice straight into Harry’s stunned face: “It wasn’t his fault, Harry. I was here, in case you don't know. I saw what happened, I saw them corner him and it was a pack of them against one, wands out in the open and ready to hurt him – and all of the sudden it is his fault – because of what, exactly?!”

“Alright, stop shouting I get it!” hissed the raven-haired wizard and somehow looked even more murderous than before. “I just don’t get it why you always have to defend him!?”

“Cause no one else would,” Ron said quietly and looked his best mate straight in the eye. “Cause if I don’t and this world we fought for will again be divided into “us” and “them”, our fight was for nothing. And because he’s an alright guy once you get to know him,” he added matter-of-factly and he might as well have punched Harry in the guts for all the damage his words did.

Potter’s bottle-green eyes went the colour of the deep ominous sea before the storm right before he erupted:

“And just when did you have the time to get to know him, Ron?! And not bother to mention it to me!? What the fuck is it about the snake that you’re keeping from me?!”

“For once I could do without your jealousy, Harry!” Ron hissed with such unexpected outburst of temper that it froze the livid raven-haired wizard to the spot. “I told you – and showed you, this very morning, if I remember correctly – for a millionth fucking time that I’m more than willing to be with you! _I.Chose.You!_ – for fuck’s sake man!” Ron raked his long fingers through his hair nervously and tried to put reigns on his temper, but he was too bloody dishevelled to succeed entirely. “Bloody hell, Harry, every day this interrogation, it’s just so fucking... it’s wrong, mate. I chose you over my own wife, remember? I even told her about us, cause I find it so damn hard to keep on living a lie and I find a way for us to be together every bloody day, sometimes to the expense of spending time with my children, so could you please cut me some slack?! Please, Harry... it’s... suffocating.”

“Merlin, Ron... I’m sorry... it’s just... it’s so bloody hard...” blurted suddenly pale Harry Potter and pulled his redheaded lover into a fierce embrace, clearly not giving a fuck that they were in plain view. “It’s just... please, baby, forgive me... I just can’t control myself around you.”

His voice subsided to whisper, as he cupped the pale beautiful face in the palms of his hands and began kissing him lightly, apologetically, and he finally seemed to remember that someone could come by and he pressed his redheaded lover into the dark corner behind the wall that was unfortunately placed just opposite the concealed Draco and the blond was in full view of the kissing couple. Hot despair surged through his body like poison, making him grit his teeth in impotent anger, but at the same time he was helpless against a perverse flood of masochistic arousal as he watched Ron being kissed thoroughly, nearly violently and with abandon of the man who apparently could afford not to give a fuck if he was seen kissing his best mate, just because he was Harry bloody Potter and he had the world by the balls.

“Harry...” Ron tried, but it was all in vain. Harry Potter was a force of nature and what Harry wanted – Harry got. Ron had always made sure of that and he gave in this time as well. But as he leaned in to kiss his insatiable lover and once again prove him his heart’s loyalty, Ron’s eyes didn’t close, like Harry’s did – instead they wandered exactly to the spot where he knew the blond was hiding and the sudden dark provoking spark that appeared inside of the sea of blue froze Draco’s heart stupid.

It was just like the first time he watched them... Only now he knew, he really _knew_ how Ron Weasley tasted and Ron knew how much he enjoyed watching... watching him, watching them, Ron being made a mess and Potter begging for it... Those sapphire eyes, charged with sex-appeal and all things Ron that were Draco’s ultimate poison – lust, challenge, a promise of a mind-blowing pleasure he could deliver – _those_ spellbinding eyes remained focused on Draco, and the blond knew he was putting on a private show just for him and he realized with a sick feeling that it was working.

He was somehow, fuck knows how, once again rock-hard, harder, leaking-hardest just from watching Ron kiss and being kissed and when Potter sank to his knees and begged for it “ _Let me have it, beautiful, I need it, love_ ” Draco almost came to the image of the fiery hair spilling against the wall as Ron leaned his head back and rocked his hips forward and began fucking Harry’s mouth with a low moan of surrender.

His provoking blue eyes only half-closed in lust, they never left the space the blond occupied as if he was trying to make sure his other lover was watching every agonizing debauched moment of it and some time down the road he released a needy “ _ohhhh_ ” and bit his lip in the world’s most “ _fuck me_ ” manner – and Draco just caved in. Clearly just under the edge of the climax, the redhead silently mouthed “ _for you, baby…_ ” – and the last of Draco’s decency went down the drain along with his sanity and self-respect. His hand found its way on his impossibly swollen cock and found it oozing pre-come and he never in his life needed it harder and faster. Barely keeping the sounds of his defeat to himself through an agonizing effort, he began fucking his tight glorious fist with the same insane rhythm Potter’s talented mouth used to suck his lover off and he _knew_ , he just knew he could time it just so that they’d come together.

Oh, yeah, he was thoroughly and utterly fucked and loving every minute of it. A hot and bothered Ron Weasley getting ravaged was clearly his most poisonous fantasy, as he was brushing against the edge of coming just by watching the beautiful muscles stretch and contract under the star-speckled expanse of pale skin and he needed to… god, did he _ever_ need to come fast and screaming and he couldn’t, he fucking couldn't because Ron hadn’t come yet and Potter, the fucking wizarding prodigy, would tear the screams out of his throat bare-handed if he ever caught him feeding off their private encounter.

“God, baby… now,” was all the warning he got in the end as Ron’s body tensed and stilled and it ended with a soundless mouthed “ _Draco – fuck…_ ” slipping from his swollen lips, and he had the blond bite himself bloody and shoot his load into the invisible barrier in front of him with a barely muffled scream, while collapsing down the wall totally drained and shivering. He was destroyed, body and soul alike and he didn’t know if he was ever going to get up again.

Ron, on the other hand, pulled Harry up still panting, pushed him back against the wall forcefully and went straight at his mouth, effectively blocking the view of the Draco’s hiding place with his massive frame. The blond Slytherin knew it was for his own protection, but he was still grateful for the small mercy of Ron being so much taller than Potter and he couldn’t see any of the damage being done to the scrawny git, because lying there, spent to exhaustion, he was hit with a fresh wave of jealousy and murderous anger that he was once more left behind for the sake of a Saviour.

“What on Godric’s shaky earth was that all about?” he heard Ron ask softly, still panting, and after there was no immediate response he added quickly: “Not that I’m complaining, mind you, it was just… unexpected.”.

And finally, buried safely into the warm expanse of Ron’s chest, Harry couldn’t help blurting out the truth:

“It’s the bloody Malfoy... I can’t stand the fucker. I know it’s irrational and childish, but I can’t help it, I hate his fucking guts for kissing you all those years back.”

“But…” tried Ron, but Harry was in no mood for lengthy explanations this night. “I know! I know _you_ kissed _him_ , not the other way around,” he hissed angrily, the grudge he carried towards the blond clearly in no way diminished by the shameless act of claiming he had just performed on Ron. “But I still hate his guts for being your first, stealing what should rightfully be mine, the bastard…”

“It was just a kiss, Harry,” Ron reminded him gently, but Draco thought bitterly that - no, it really wasn’t just a kiss, it was the beginning of a life-long obsession that ended up in love nobody wanted – and the thought broke his heart yet again. And for once Potter seemed to have agreed with him.

“I beg to differ, Ron,” he said in a low dangerous voice and looked at his redheaded lover with sharp green eyes. The look was so penetrating as if he was trying to perform legilimency and Draco’s muscles tensed in the attempt to suppress a shiver, because Potter clearly wasn’t as dumb as he looked – he must have seen _something_ , he must have found out somehow…

“Not just a kiss,” Harry pointed out with certainty and unmistakeable antagonism in his voice. “Not for him, anyway. Did you ever see how he looks at you?! Mother of god, those greedy eyes follow you everywhere, how could you not notice?!”

“Apparently, because I’m as  _daft_ as some people keep on reminding me,” Ron said dryly and Harry winced as if he had been slapped.

“Look, I didn’t say...” he began on a more apologetic note, but Ron would have none of it, the darkness that resided at the bottom of the crystal blue eyes finally lashed out full-force.

“For the last time, Harry – leave Malfoy out of it,” he hissed. “I haven’t spoken more than fifty sentences to him in the classroom this whole year and I don’t know nor do I care if he’s butchering me behind my back and sending my bits to Timbuktu in his mind – he’s mostly been nice to me this whole time, except for the little misunderstanding we had at the beginning and I’d like to keep it at that. It’s not like he even talks to me since he’s been back to school this month, so quit making that about him and for Godric’s sake, let me be my own man and make my own choices! I want to be able to talk anyone, everyone, to bloody Malfoy included, if I feel like it without you hissing at my back, I want to be able to make my own friendships – and break them, if I see fit – I’ve been so bloody lonely this whole time when I was at home and now you keep on trying to have me all to yourself and I just can’t, Harry!”

Hurt and despair stared at the flabbergasted and scared face of Harry Potter, but Ron could not stop what he started anymore - it had to be said:  

“I love you to death and back,” he said quietly and it was like a knife in Draco’s heart, knowing that he was never going to wrench a confession so priceless out of him. “There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you, you know that - but you have to let me be myself. I’d love to call myself yours, Harry, I wished for nothing else since I was a teenager, but there won’t be much left for you to love if you take over completely. You can’t make my choices for me, you have to trust me a bit in that. After all, you’re one of them,” he smiled tiredly and when Harry all but collapsed around him, stuttering cluttered apologies and confessions of love all in one, Ron just hugged him around the shoulders and his deep blue eyes suddenly lost and sad, landed straight on Draco’s face, as if he could see him through the invisible barrier and wanted to apologize:

“You’ll never know just how much I’m giving up for you,” he whispered and that last look of silent goodbye slashed right through the naked heart of a broken down blond and he felt as if he could feel his life bleeding into the ground. Ron loved him – but he was never going to be his. That much was clear now. His brain knew it, his shivering limbs acknowledged it, but his heart wouldn’t listen. It still screamed bloody murder in the absence of the one man it wanted beyond anything. And his heart was a viciously stubborn thing made of nothing but hellfire. It burnt through his pride, his numbness, his recognition that Ron didn’t want him and won’t have him and left nothing but ashes in its wake.

And now it brought him here, to the Muggle park, as out of place as he could ever be, to have one last say. Cause he wasn’t giving up. He couldn’t. There was next to nothing left if he did and it wasn’t enough for him to keep on living. In his misery he had cursed Potter time and time again for saving him during the war – he should have left him perish and not leave him to breathe on empty. He didn’t want this shell of a life, he was either going to get his redhead, what little of him he could ever hope to have – or die trying. One last time, he told himself, but he knew that if there would be as much as a hint of a crack in Ron’s armour, he would charge at it time and time again until he would see it shatter.

 _If not..._ he didn’t want to think about this option, he couldn’t afford to. It left him too lost and weak and he could have none of that tonight.

He closed his eyes to clear his mind and inhaled deeply. He opened them again resolutely when the misty evening air permeated with a heavy smell of smoke and faint scent of food flooded his lungs and he willed himself to focus on finding the one face that had the power to send his heart into over-drive. The use of magic was out of the question, the place was flooded with Muggles, so he was going to have to trust his instincts. Two men, a woman, and three children, that’s what he over-heard Potter talking about, this is what he was looking for.

And it only took him about a minute. They were there, by the fire, just like Potter said they were going to be. His wife was missing, probably at home, recovering and minding the baby, but the Holy Trinity was there and so were the three children, a girl and two boys, all of them with a hair colour that violently reflected the fiery flames. But none of that mattered to Draco, as long as _he_ was there. As soon as he set eyes on the tall figure with a long fire-red plait falling down the broad shoulders like a snake made of molten red-gold, his breath hitched and his legs moved forward out of their own accord. Draco began his journey through the crowd slowly, but unrelenting, like a hunter through the jungle out to get his prey.

He never noticed the dark figure apparating almost without a sound in the shadow of the trees behind his back. She had followed him here and Narcissa Malfoy was determined not to leave without getting her answers.


	40. Chasing shadows slipping

_"Help me, I'm holding on for dear life,_

_won't look down, won't open my eyes_

_Keep my glass full until morning light,_

_'cause I'm just holding on for tonight_

_On for tonight..."_

Sia, Chandelier

 

 

“Cannot!”

“Can too!”

“Cannot!”

“Can too, can too, can too!”

“Moooom!! Hugo is being daft and an idiot!”

“Mommy!!!”

The big blue eyes of Hugo Weasley filled with tears and he turned to seek comfort where he knew he was always going to get it: he ran straight into the embrace of his favourite uncle. Harry Potter gently picked up his “child-crush”, as the Weasley family humorously labelled their relationship, and proceeded to console him with a string of whispered words that soon banished the tears and made the tiny face light up with a big smile.

Hermione sighed and gave her unruly daughter a well-practiced look of indignation: 

“Rose Weasley! _What.A.Vocabulary!_ That is _no way_   to call your brother! Apologize _this instant_ , young lady!”

“But mom...!!”

Seriously, this child was going to be the death of her. When God was giving away patience and good manners, Rose was clearly standing in a different line. Possibly the one where stubbornness and a razor-blade tongue were at discount. Exceptionally sharp wit and physical appearance aside – this daughter of hers was a Weasley to the bone. And she needed to make a mental note to kindly “remind” Ron that calling himself _daft_ already reflected in the vocabulary of their kids.

“I said “ _now_ ” Rose!” she repeated pointedly, because, seriously, it would not do have her authority challenged by a child under the age of 5!

“Hmpf... sorry, Hugh...” Rose threw a sulking look at her younger brother, currently happily clinging to Uncle Harry’s neck - but unable to let her brother have the last word, she quickly added: “But you’re still being silly!”

“Rose Weasley!” her mother tried to interfere with a shocked voice, but this time the little ginger warrior princess would not be defeated:

“He is, he is, honestly, mom! He says he wants to marry _Uncle Harry_ when he grows up! One _can’t_   marry a relative, you said that yourself yesterday when Molly and I played pretend and I wanted to marry daddy! And everybody knows boys cannot marry each other and Aunt Ginny would be terribly upset, there! He’s being _silly_!”

Hermione’s stupefied face at the infallible argument and the whole reason underneath the row made Harry throw his head back in laughter and squeeze his little ginger treasure even closer to the chest.

“Never mind them,” he told the little boy quietly and earned himself a tight hug around the neck and a soft mooshy peck on the cheek. “Aunt Ginny may be my wife, but I don’t have a husband yet, so perhaps we can make an arrangement,” he said as seriously as he could muster, but unable to hide a spark of amusement hiding at the bottom of his legendary green eyes. “And that thing about not being allowed to marry boys – why should girls be allowed to marry them, and we shouldn’t? We’re going to change that, aren’t we?” he quickly glanced at his tall and gorgeous lover – currently standing by his side and barely suppressing a laugh - before he allowed one of his disarming smiles to stretch across his face as the little fellow hugged him tightly and then leaned his head on his chest in a gesture of absolute trust and devotion.

“Loooooove Hally,” he said simply and Harry thought that really, he was turning into such a sentimental old fool, because... gosh, this child was precious.

“Harry, don’t fill his head with nonsense!” Hermione said more sharply than she intended to, because there was something underneath his voice that irked her and rubbed her the wrong way. She was hoping for a nice family evening to celebrate the Guy Fawkes Night; a Muggle tradition she remembered fondly from her childhood, but then Ron casually asked Harry to join them and Hugo began jumping on the spot with joy and she couldn’t very well say no, could she? So instead of a relaxed evening in the company of a loving husband and excited children, she had to deal with arguing little monsters and Harry glued to Ron as if they were joint at the hip.

And it didn’t improve her disposition in the slightest that Freddie was constantly pulling at her arm, demanding to be released from her tight grip. He was the most restless of her children and prone to sudden disappearances and though at the beginning she had tried reasoning with him that it was simply too dangerous to let him run around freely, Freddie just stared at her as if she was speaking Chinese, so she simply opted for holding onto his hand as firmly and unrelenting as the rebelling child would allow.

But in that moment Ron unexpectedly scooped Rosie in his arms and spun his little princess around. Her unabashed squeals and laughter filled the air; argument immediately forgotten when her big dad held her close to his chest and said playfully:

“Rosie, if you want to marry someone, you better ask them first. I don’t remember being asked for consent!”

Radiantly smiling little girl, Weasley-red from joy, embarrassment and laughter, hugged her worshiped father behind his neck and pushed a few loose hairs from his plait behind his ear in a neat, most Hermione-like way, then boldly went on to propose with a forced serious expression on her freckled little face:

“Daddy, would you please marry me?”

“Gladly,” said her gorgeous redheaded father with a big naughty grin on his face, kissed her soundly and spun her around some more, making her giggle and shriek in excitement and joy:

“Daddy, stop it! Mommy, help! Tell daddy to put me down! He’s such a troll, you keep him, he’s making me dizzy!”

“Ron, honestly...” Hermione tried, strangely annoyed by her daughter’s laughter and fits of giggly squeals as Ron held her up high like a ballerina and spun her around until they were just a blur made of her long fiery hair, flowing around them like a cloud.

“I never could deny my little princess anything, your wish is my command, my betrothed,” he laughed into her feigned fear and genuine excitement and one could see from the moon how much the little girl enjoyed her big dad’s attention. They were a proper spectacle, Hermione found herself thinking; her tall and incredibly handsome husband with a brilliant happy smile radiating from his stunning blue eyes and the little girl that look every bit like an angel with a veil of flaming hair floating around her pretty freckled face. Hermione knew she should be happy; overjoyed and proud at the lovely family she could call her own, yet she somehow felt as if she was looking into a glass-ball of happiness from the outside, as if she was not a part of the lovely picture made of people who clearly loved each other.

And Freddie chose that very moment to violently jerk his hand out of her grip and before she could react, he dove like an arrow into the thickly packed crowd standing between them and the bonfire and disappeared.

Her cries of panic came much too late.

~

Draco kept his eyes on him as he moved through the crowd. He could not see his face because he had his back turned against the crowd and fucking Potter – who else? - had his undivided attention, yet the tall figure, strangely illuminated gold by the dancing flames, seemed to hold the power to pull the blond closer by the invisible strings, as if the tall muscled frame called to him and he had to follow. He found him irresistible.

He rested his eyes on the silken river of fiery hair, caught in a loose plait like stormy stream trapped in a water-bed and he remembered how the liquid strands slipped through his fingers like tepid water and Ron smiled indulgingly at his obsession with the soft flames. His eyes traveled hungrily up and down the endless legs, clad in faded Muggle jeans for the occasion and - mother of god, this symphony of a man could make the cheapest rags look like a designer product, couldn’t he, he was just _that_   ridiculously good-looking! And as if he knew that he’s got an ex-lover standing by to sweep of his feet and daze completely, the stunning redhead chose that very moment to remove his leather jacket. Draco’s breath hitched and his mind blurred at the edges when he watched the faint contours of the lean strong muscles appear underneath the thin tight fabric and the light and shadows from the flames dance seductively across the creamy golden-glowing skin… His redheaded god was pure poetry, if there ever was one.

His mouth went dry in anticipation and expectation of something terrifically earth-shattering happening and at the same time he realized that he didn’t have a plan, not a single meagre _draft of a plan_ whatsoever and his heart just went into an overdrive in panic. He desperately tried to focus on something else and he forcefully turned his head to the people surrounding him to see what – or who - else he had to deal with.

Two of the kids – a girl of about 5 and a smaller, skinny little boy - were arguing, that much he could discern from the body language of waving limbs and abrupt defiant motions. The little girl looked almost like an angel from the pictures of the Muggle artists of old: she had a cloud of vividly red hair and bright blue eyes, but everything else in her posture just screamed Hermione Granger’s heritage. Besides the arms crossed commandingly on her chest, she was actually tapping on the floor with one of her feet as if she was slowly losing patience with the wrong direction of the argument. 

At that moment the little ginger boy she was arguing with turned around and ran towards Potter with shaking slumped shoulders indicating tears – but Draco’s step had almost halted along with his heart. The boy was a spitting image of Ron, so much so that it felt like a slap in the face to see Potter pick him up and hold him close. It really hit home and hit hard how Potter got to have the best of Ron - and there was not a damn thing left for him. The thought was unexpectedly acid.  He got nothing of Ron, not _one_ thing, while Potter got to wrap his arms around the little replica of Ron with the man himself standing by their side, observing the love story, most likely with a smile on his face. What possible chance could Draco stand? He meant _nothing_ in their world, he didn’t fit in... Perhaps Ron was right, perhaps he shouldn’t bother...

He closed his eyes quickly to clear his mind, to focus and perhaps let the unwelcome thought wither away – and opened them to the image of his favourite redhead suddenly sweeping his little daughter off the ground and cradling her in his arms. As she squealed happily, he spun her around twice and then kept on holding her close while he was talking to her with a smile on his face. And just like that he was facing Draco and the blond’s legs moved forward out of their own accord. The beautiful face with love shining right out of his brilliant eyes onto his daughter was his ultimate poison. He knew he was getting hurt, but he couldn’t stay away.

He watched the girl, Ron’s daughter, put her thin arms around his neck and fix a strand of his hair behind his ear lovingly and there was such strong bond of love and magic between them that he found himself unreasonably jealous of the little girl that held such a big part of her wonderful dad’s heart. His reasonable brain knew that he should be ashamed of being jealous of a mere child, but he way past the point of being reasonable. There was so little of his old self left since Ron walked away that he sometimes wondered if he ever really existed, that proud, cold, vain boy-turned-man, a proper Malfoy that needed no one and didn’t feel an empty aching hole in his heart where love used to be. He was this now... this ruin of a man, who came here willing to sell his soul for a mere promise of feeling whole again.

The row with his father, the confrontation with his mother during which he was forced to lie on top of the two days of grey eternity since he was last submerged into that toe-curling, bone-melting body-heat, when those brilliant smiles were all for him and he could see his own reflection in those alluring sapphire eyes – those endless two days had taken their toll and he was a man on the edge of sanity. He could hardly be expected to act reasonably and jealousy of a little girl was the least of his sins.  

But in that moment the tall redhead smiled at his daughter, every bit a sweet naughty smile, and kissed her on the cheek soundly just before he lifted her high towards the dark evening sky and began spinning her around until she was floating through the air like a phoenix through the sparks of the bonfire and they were just a blur of fiery veil made of his motion and her flowing hair - and Draco felt as if he was just shown magic for the first time. _This_. This was how it felt to be loved by Ron: he took his breath away with magic and love until there was nothing left but his hypnotising flame. He shot him up to the skies like a roaring fire in passion and shared his magnificent heart with him among the stars so nothing else could ever compare again. How could he settle for something less? Trapped in a moment, he couldn’t take his eyes of the father and daughter caught in a feather-light dance of love and flames; they seemed untouchable, majestic, timeless. 

He was barely aware of anything else that went around him and only with his peripheral vision he registered that people stared at the father and daughter spellbound, smiling, and Potter, still holding Ron’s little boy in his arms, looked every bit entranced and downright predatory. The only person looking utterly miserable, was Ron’s wife.

And strangely enough it was her pale frowning face that woke him up from his reverie and he took a good hard look at the woman, who walked away with what looked like a main prize – Ron’s hand in marriage – but failed to keep his heart. Granger just stood there, holding by the hand another little redheaded scoundrel, fighting her grip tooth and nail, and she looked every bit abandoned, excluded and insignificant as if she didn’t belong into this perfect picture of familial happiness. And quite unexpectedly Draco felt a surge of pity for her.

In a happier time, that seemed like in a different lifetime from where he was standing, so very worn down to the bone, he remembered Ron telling him that she tricked him into marrying her so quickly and that in a fit of anger he told her the truth about Harry and himself. But he also added in a softer voice that – unaware of Harry’s feelings for him - he would probably had married her anyway and that he didn’t resent the actual marriage as much as he resented her taking his right to make a choice from him. At the time Draco had felt no sympathy for the woman who got to wear Ron’s ring and his surname and he might he even felt a bit of glee at the fact that her manipulative devises came back to haunt her. But not anymore.

She must have loved him dreadfully if she was willing to act so unscrupulously and against her righteous nature – and she was about to lose him just like he already did. She knew he was cheating, yet she clung to him stubbornly and Draco knew what this was all about: _hope_. Hope that it’ll all somehow work itself out in her favour and as long as she didn’t gave Ron up, she still had a chance of happiness with him. He had come back for the same thing: a chance of happiness, however meagre crumb of it, because he could not imagine finding it with someone else.

And then it happened. The other little boy, the one who seemed such a feisty little beast, suddenly managed to pull his hand out of his mother's grip and shot like an arrow into the crowd surrounding the bonfire. Perhaps he thought he was just a funny game of hide-and-seek or he was bored and dead-set on exploring – for one mischievous reason or another he ran like the wind, completely unaware what awaited at the other side of a sea of legs and annoyed _“Hey, watch it!”_ calls of the people he forcefully bumped into that went far above his head. 

Draco wasn’t thinking. Which was a good thing, because if he acted rationally he would have probably gone for his wand – which was likely to cause more problems in a long run than it would have solved. But instead of thinking he acted on pure instinct. While he was scanning the crowd for Ron, he must have subconsciously picked up the layout of the place and somehow just knew that when the little redhead was going to find his way out of the crowd, possibly at considerable speed, he would find himself close to the bonfire. _Much, much too close to the flames._ So he ran.

He didn’t know why he did it nor how he found strength in a body that moments ago felt so weak it was barely under his command. But he ran and pushed people away and could already see the little redhead break the crowd in front of him but he was still just an arm’s length too far to grab Ron’s little son when the boy stumbled into the clearing in front of the fire with too much speed to stop in time…

Draco didn’t even know what he had done nor how he had done it, but suddenly he was flying through the air to the background of panicked screams with only one target in front of his eyes – the little boy who couldn’t and won’t stop in time before he got hurt. The little one was stumbling, head first, limbs flailing in an impossible effort to brake and heat was just so unbearable, that he quickly closed his eyes to make it go away – and suddenly he was crushed onto the spot, blessedly motionless, solid bony weight pinning him down and a larger body over him protecting him from the immediate heat and hungry flames.

Draco knew he only had a split second before his clothes caught fire and his exposed back got burnt beyond repair, so he grabbed the little redheaded thing underneath him with the force he didn’t know he had and rolled them both away from the fire in one liquid motion. He felt pain crawling up his back like a basilisk and the fire was still blowing its deadly heat at him, flames roaring and crackling as if they were mad to have lost a prey – but he knew they were safe enough for the moment and for the first time he looked at the little body, trembling underneath him. The little face was startled and confused and there was something vaguely familiar in his expression, but he seemed unharmed and not too besides himself at that.

“What’s your name?” he asked him, just to say something, to introduce some sense of normality, to possibly calm him down.

“Freddie,” the little one whispered and now the blond knew what he was looking at – the boy was a Weasley after all, not so much alike Ron than Ron’s mother and his dead brother at that.

“Well, Freddie,” he said as calmly as he could. “I once knew your Uncle Fred, I’m sure you’ve heard your dad and your Uncle George talk about him.”

When the little one nodded eagerly and his face relaxed in recognition that this awfully pale and sad-looking man was not a complete stranger, Draco continued softly:

“He and your Uncle George were as quick on their feet as you are and just as fearless. And - careless. You see, a bad thing happened to Uncle Fred one day and Uncle George was left alone. It made him awfully sad and angry for a very long time and I know your mom and dad would cry a river if anything was to happen to you. You must promise me to be more careful. Can you do that, not to make your mommy and daddy sad?”

He just managed to catch the beginning of enthusiastic nodding when the little one literally disappeared from his sight, snatched away by a hysterically sobbing Hermione Granger-Weasley.

“ _Ohmygod, ohmygod, ohmydeargod, Freddie_!!! Do you have _any_ idea what a terrible thing you almost did?! Oh, sweet Merlin and all Saints, you must promise me _never_ to do such a thing again! _Promise_ , Freddie! Oh, holy Mary and Rowena, my poor baby!!! Mommy got _so, so very_ scared, darling, and now Rosie is very upset and Hugo is crying… oh, my poor thing, thanks Heavens you’re still with us! George would have buried me alive and himself with me, if anything was to happen to you!”

She continued to scold him and hug him for dear life, but suddenly a big hand grabbed Draco by the scorched clothes on his back and picked him up like he weighed nothing. And the rest of the world ceased to exist. Just like that he was once more staring the love of his life straight into the deathly pale face and the stormy blue eyes were as wild as the ocean.

“ _You_ … You came here… all the way here. And you saved my son’s life,” the redhead said in lack of other words, staring at him hungrily, as if he never saw him before and Draco just drowned in the sea of blue he had missed so badly. “What do you want, Draco?” he asked suddenly, unexpectedly, in a quieter voice. “Anything,” he added quickly as if he wanted to make sure he was perfectly clear. “You can have anything you want, just say the word and it’s yours. I have a life-debt - and then some – to re-pay you.”

He stared at him up-close and Draco felt as if he was swimming, dizzy and barely there underneath those commanding eyes and his whole world seemed to have tunnel-visioned on those two pools of brilliance on Ron’s face. He couldn’t speak, god, he couldn’t… Adrenaline was surging savagely through his veins at unimaginable opportunity and wild hope and his thoughts were nothing but a blur. But luckily he didn’t need to actually think to know what he wanted. His heart spoke before he ever regained back a single solid thought.

“You,” he breathed out quietly and saw his eyes go bright blue in wonder. “ _You,”_ he repeated quietly, feverishly, because his fucked-up brain couldn’t come up with a single fancy eloquent expression to describe what it was that he so desperately wanted from him. It was so many things, a million names for them – love, rich late-evening laughter with abandon, wild impossible dreams at night, branding searing-hot passion in his arms, safety of his embrace, slow love-making by the fire, morning tenderness, more love – all of them with a single thing in common. Ron. This is what they all spelled out and this is what it came down to. “I want you,Ron,” he said almost desperately because he knew how impossible this was. But he couldn’t help it. “Nothing else. Just… you,” he whispered, at the end of his rope. “Please… find us a way.” 

When he saw a sense of emotion he couldn’t quite read flash across his face his heart suddenly squeezed violently in his chest at the terrible thought that perhaps once again, he had asked too much, that Ron would say “ _No_ ” and tell him that this was too high a price and… - he had that before and he really couldn’t afford to have that again, god, no! - so his feverish brain tried to save what little it could and he blurted out quickly:

“I just want us to talk about it. Just… give me a chance. To talk and to tell you… _things_ … There so much I want to tell you and we always get interrupted and… please, Ron,” he whispered frantically, knowing that he was almost out of time and felt his strength draining into the ground under those unreadable eyes. “Please. Just a talk. Then you decide,” he said in a shaky voice and felt as if he was about to collapse.

A long moment of agonizing silence; the sparks from the fire reflecting gold in the deep rich blue of Ron Weasley’s eyes and the very air around them freezing still in anticipation - and then the tall redhead nodded curtly, almost imperceptibly and with so small a motion he moved the world entire.

“Me, then,” he said softly and after a short pause he added in a quiet, almost business-like voice, completely void of all emotion: “We’ll talk. Tomorrow, eight o’clock, after school…. Our place,” he finished in a softer voice and the rush of happiness that flooded over Draco in that moment was numbing and bone-melting.

He was sure he looked like an idiot, standing there, struggling not to collapse and at the same time trying to arrange the features on his face into something that didn’t just scream how stupidly happy and hopeful he felt and - _godohfuckingod_ , where the hell was Malfoyian drill of coolness and impassiveness when one needed it most!? Try as he may he knew he couldn’t completely erase the ridiculously goofy grin that lit up his face at the thought that Ron said “ _yes_ ” to his chance to explain and to meet… perhaps to their _second_ chance... The thought was mind-fucking-blowing as much as it was scary and the very _idea_ that he needed to get ready and prepare carefully and argue reasonably why he _thought_   that what they had was worth keeping and then perhaps, just _perhaps_ … -

The train of his thought stopped as if it hit the mountain, when he was suddenly, without as much as a warning, pulled closer and in the next instant immersed so incredibly, fantastically deeply into Ron’s personal space. The sensation of familiar body-heat hit him like a bludger to the head and he was suddenly lost for words, without as much as a single solid thought, melting into the luxurious, bitterly missed sensation. Ron’s presence was his poison, exquisite, wonderfully breath-taking in its warm undoing simplicity; it had the power to squash the feelings of rising panic like they were merely annoying bugs under the foot of a giant and banish the bone-deep exhaustion like a hurricane would blow apart a hint of a smoke. And when he found himself on Ron’s chest, his head buried into the crook of his neck and the strong arms holding him across the back, sheltering him, supporting his weight and the weight of his grief, holding him together like no one else could – he was seconds from sobbing. He felt his lover’s face nuzzle into his hair and inhale deeply and he heard him whisper:

“God, I missed this… and now you say you’d like to own me, baby…”

He felt a small invisible kiss disappear into his hair, just a soft press of mouth, and he could have died on the spot from a rush of happiness.

But he was cursed, he must have been.

“Ron…”

There is was again, the god-awful loathed voice of his life’s nemesis, though this time it was tense, almost panicked and when he was gently moved a palm’s width away from his spot of Heaven in Ron’s embrace, Harry Potter just stood there, Ron’s little sobbing son still in his arms, his face reflecting such unabashed hatred and alertness that the blond's skin prickled in a sudden feeling of raw danger. But for once Draco wasn’t backing off. He put all of his cold disdain, searing anger and vicious animosity into the look he paid Potter and he saw his eyes grow wide in sudden recognition. _Potter knew._ Whether he guessed, felt or found out – Draco was certain he knew that he was out to get Ron. And the blond knew he would be _murderous_. He just didn’t care anymore.

“Why…” Potter started in an icy voice, without ever moving his eyes off him, but Ron interrupted firmly, without even bothering to sound apologetic:

“He just saved my son, Harry. Surely you must have noticed.”

The agitated sarcasm and a hint of potent anger in his voice was undeniable and Draco managed a tiny lopsided smirk of victory without breaking the hostile gaze - but the staring contest wasn’t meant to be. He was suddenly all but knocked backwards and suffocated by the squealing and sobbing Hermione Granger-Weasley, who hugged him most violently and wouldn’t stop stuttering among the hysterical tears and fits of sobbing laughter:

“ _Thankyou, thankyou, thankyou, ohmygod,_ thank you, Draco!!!” He couldn’t remember her ever calling him by his given name before and he was impossibly embarrassed by her gratitude and, emotionally fragile as he was, unexpectedly moved by her tears... and strangely enough - her embrace wasn’t half as bad, because she smelled of Ron and how could any of Ron ever be bad in any form…?

And suddenly her tear-streaked face stared at him from up close and she spoke in a shaky voice as clear and firm as the circumstances would permit:

“You were Heaven-sent, Draco Malfoy. I can’t thank you enough. If there’s anything I can do for you – or your family – you must promise to let me know and just… - consider it done,” she looked him deeply in the eye and he had to suppress a nervous giggle at the thought of her reaction if he sent it all to the dogs and _truly_ spoke his mind: _“Oh, how about you let me borrow your husband? For, let’s say… all times. Permanently. You know, to have and to keep and never to return…”_

It was impossible, he knew it; he knew he had to let Ron do... _this_ , whatever he chose to do... under his own terms or risk never having him again, but he was so tired and sick of pretending and the answer she clearly expected just wouldn’t come, so he opted for kneeling down to little Freddie’s height and looked him straight into the honey-coloured eyes.

“Don’t mention it,” he said quietly. “It was my privilege to meet this little man here, though under unfavourable circumstances. There have been deaths enough, just…. make sure you keep him safe,” he finished and was almost knocked backwards by an unexpected hug the little redhead launched at him. A son of Ron after all, he thought strangely moved and he found his balance by holding onto the little redhead’s back and the feeling of the little heart fluttering next to him was not entirely unpleasant.

But when he got up his blood froze cold. Sometimes during his encounter with Freddie, Ron took Hugo from Harry’s embrace, rocking him softy in his arms, wiping away his tears and whispering to him soothingly – which left Harry empty-handed and standing still as a statue, chillingly threatening, and very much invading Draco’s personal space. Draco had a feeling that a continent between them wouldn’t have been a void big enough. He straightened himself up and faced him silently, staring down the alert clever eyes, the colour of green ice, and tried to suppress a shiver of exhaustion and acute danger - and just hold his ground.

He wasn’t expecting gratitude from Potter for saving his nephew, but such open aggressive hostility found him unprepared. The way Potter’s eyes were lit up with in almost manic hatred made him realize how very vulnerable he had made himself with stepping so deeply into the Muggle territory, where Potter felt at home and he didn’t have a clue about. Not to mention, that his terrifying opponent managed to evaporate the Darkest wizard of present time as a mere teenager and his brutally strong magic was quickly becoming a thing of legends among his Auror peers. Yes, Harry Potter was powerful, and he was livid and his wrath was currently focused entirely on Draco.

“What are you _doing_ here, Malfoy?!” The hiss came so unexpectedly he almost took a step backward and he only had years of Malfoyian drill in keeping a marble façade to thank that he didn’t wince and cave in. But Potter felt his weakness and pushed further like a blood-hound:

“What are you _really_ doing here, so deeply in the Muggle territory, attending a Muggle festivity, snake?!”

“None of your goddamn business, _Professor_ Potter!” Draco managed through gritted teeth, cause his only weapon was to remind Potter of a reality outside this surreal insane encounter, before he decided to use legilimency – or worse - on him and all Ron’s efforts to keep the precious balance would have gone down the drain. Potter was clearly completely unscrupulous when it came to Ron’s heart and the blond knew that, tired and drained as he was, he was in no state to stand up to the force such as Potter - as much as he hated the man, he truly was one of the best.

Luckily his words seemed to have the desired effect. Some of the madness disappeared from the Saviour’s green eyes and something alike a flash of reason crossed over his face as his threatening posture relaxed a little – and Draco decided to use his window of opportunity, because he just might not get another one this evening.

“Right, if this is settled, I’ll be going then,” he said with as much cold civility as he could muster. “I have no wish to be questioned like a common criminal and I’ve got _a burn or two_ to attend to.”

With these words he turned around, head held up high, to walk away resolutely and prayed that Potter hasn’t lost it completely and wouldn’t try to shoot a hex - or three - at his back – though he didn’t think so. He was counting on it, actually. Because even though he was clearly blinded by jealousy and not above anything when it came to his beautiful redheaded mate, hexing someone in the back was hardly the Saviour’s style. He was Harry Potter, the man who faced the biggest badass of the century head on and that’s how he dealt with all of his problems. As dark and crazy as he had become with a Horcrux residing inside of him, Harry Potter didn’t have a single Slytherin bone in his body – and Draco was too much of a serpent himself not to profit on it. He had a reputation to uphold after all!

But then a single word came and the voice stopped him dead in his track as if he was instantly hypnotized by his Master.

“Draco!”

Ron Weasley’s voice was uncommonly warm and Draco could barely believe his luck – and Ron’s cheek in the presence of his astute wife and his fierce lover! – when he slowly turned around and looked into the pretty freckled face he was going to dream about tonight and every other night.

“See you tomorrow... at school,” the redhead added almost matter-of-factly, with a small smile playing in the corner of his generous mouth, and Draco’s heartbeat got lost somewhere around the knot in his throat when he made a stupid mistake of looking straight into the mesmerising blue eyes, set on telling an entirely _different_ story than the sweetly smiling face. He felt the blood rush to his face and then down again and he knew he must have flushed like a virgin on his wedding night at the shameless provocation in those eyes – Merlin Almighty, Ron must have gone utterly bonkers to stare at him with what might as well have been an open invitation to get naked - with Potter standing all but 3 feet away!

“And thank you once again,” he said softly and Draco couldn’t utter a word if his life depended on it, so very melted he had become in the space of seconds. So he just nodded not to save what was left of his meagre dignity, turned away and got lost in the crowd as soon as he could manage, before he went and did something entirely mad and deadly, like snogging him stupid. _Because he wanted to._  So much so.... Goddammit, that last look in Ron’s eyes... He was sure the redhead was going to have to answer for it to his fuming lover – but right now he was beyond caring. That’s just how bluntly stupidly happy he was.

He walked among the laughing chattering crowd like a man drunk, not even bothering to mask the big goofy grin plastered to his face and hardly aware of where he was going. When his feet brought him to the apparition point out of their own accord he just stood there for a while longer, in the dark shadow of the willowed trees, observing the illuminated scenery in front of him as if he wanted an imprint of it forever stored in his brain. He was still out there, somewhere, and he was coming to meet him.

He smiled, closed his eyes and disapparated. Once he opened his eyes again, he was in the lobby of the Manor, staring straight into the ice-cold eyes of Narcissa Malfoy, arms crossed on her chest, waiting for her answers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title of the chapter is taken from a Jethro Tull song "Moths"


	41. Anything but that...

_"This question haunts my mind_

_Will we survive this night?_

_We're harboring the meek_

_Will we survive the sleep?"_

Pantera, The Sleep

 

She knew she had to be careful when she followed him. She almost got caught, apparating so close on his heels, but he was too distraught to notice and the commotion, coming from the bustling crowd of people, silenced the feeble sound her skilled apparation made. She was, after all, the top of her class since her days at Hogwarts and the years she spent following her husband’s more... _obscure_ activities left her highly trained for a reconnaissance mission such as this one. She could do this; she just needed her wits about.

She was in no hurry to follow him since she clearly got to the right location - she would not be worth her time in the company of the Dark Lord if she could not spot her son in so Muggle a place! - and she could very well do with putting some distance between them. So she took a good hard look about her and nothing much made sense. Surely there was a bonfire, but it must have been a Muggle tradition of some sorts because Samhain was already behind them and - by lovely Morgana and Rowena, these Muggle people were bizarre!

They were scattered about the place in small random groups, most of them gathered around the large bonfire in their midst, but there seemed to be no celebratory activities going on. Whatever this was about - there were no rituals, no dance, no acts of worship nor rites of passage – just a tightly packed crowd of people, younger ones scandalously scantily dressed, some of them indeed wearing poorly designed masks or sporting painted faces, others running around with blazing crosses and old-fashioned Muggle uniforms or – that one indeed sent chills down her spine – striped costumes that looked far too alike the terrible outfit Lucius was condemned to wear while in Azkaban. But there seemed to be no structure to the activities, no procedure to follow, no tradition to be passed down the generations. How very odd!

But she shouldn’t lose her focus – or, god forbid, her son – therefore she left the sanctuary of darkness under the trees and followed his footsteps into the light and shadows carefully, all the while keeping her eyes on him and gracefully manoeuvring among the loud crowd. Her beautiful son stopped at some point and she took a moment to admire his graceful lean figure illuminated by the fire – by gods, what a catch he was! The sadness on his face seemed to have strangely venerated his features, his grey eyes, alight with feverish silver light, looked as large as life itself and he seemed almost ethereal.

Her heart squeezed in her chest at the thought that something, someone was hurting him and she was helpless until she found out what this was all about. She just _knew_ it wasn’t one of those things one would shrug off carelessly, as in – _oh, it’ll all sort itself out in the end_. Her lovely boy was always a bit... special, prone to sudden fevers, too fragile for Lucius’s attempts at making a little clone of himself out of him – and strangely passionate. That feature of his always brought a barely concealed smile on her lips, because it was the one thing he had undoubtedly inherited from her. She knew how much self-control it took to contain temper such as theirs under control and sometimes she felt sorry for her darling boy to have inherited it – but she secretly valued it as his greatest trait. It made him more than a Malfoy.

And watching him like that she suddenly noticed that his eyes were fixated onto something; that he, indeed, was observing something or someone with unwavering focus and an expression of hunger she had never before seen on his face. He looked every bit entranced and she instinctively knew that he had found what he came looking for at this abstract place. She followed his gaze and her heart nearly stopped. A wave of disbelief and concern washed over her when she finally saw who held her son’s undivided attention.

There he was: the Saviour himself, Harry-his Majesty-Potter, animatedly talking to a ridiculously tall redheaded man whose face she couldn’t see, and that obnoxious – and brilliant, if rumors were to be believed - Muggle-born witch standing aside that made Bella – Merlin forgive her black soul – curse out loud in a most un-lady-like manner whenever she remembered they’ve lost her as a prisoner. There were also children; a gorgeous little angel-like girl and two slightly younger scrawny boys that looked about the same age. It didn’t exactly take Salazaar’s brains to see that the brats were Weasleys of some sorts – there was literally no wizarding family in England with similar brilliant shade of gold-red.

What did Draco want with these people? They were not of their sort! Surely, there must have been some kind of logical explanation! Why would he look so sad… and wistful… so intensely focused on them as if they had something he desperately wanted. It was almost like… her heart sped up: _it couldn’t be!_ In spite of the heat from fire she suddenly felt chilled to the bone… The very thought was… _unimaginable_. Utterly unacceptable.

Of course, she often caught rumours… whispered insinuations, sometimes even an evil sting, why her beautiful son was still single and would rarely be seen in a female company, but she shrugged them off with “ _Oh, he still has plenty of time!_ ” or “ _He just has exquisite taste!_ ” and she would often affirm as loudly as it was still deemed decent in public that she strongly discouraged Draco from dating recklessly through the thin ranks of remaining purebloods and absolutely _forbade_ him to marry until she could find him a perfect spouse…. But in reality, she was slowly becoming just a tiny bit… _anxious_. She didn’t approve of Lucius’s more crude methods of making their lovely boy find his match and continue the Malfoy line, but she had to admit to herself that she was rather hopeful he would soon surprise her with a well-suited pureblood witch on his arm. Though the way things were going… Surely this could not be!

Even if he – by any chance, though dreadfully unlikely – did develop a certain… _preference_ for the same sex – it was not unheard of, of course, just unwelcome and rather embarrassing, yet for the families with a single heir potentially catastrophic! -  surely he couldn’t be romantically interested in that abominable half-blood! There _had_ to be a better explanation!

But at that moment one of the two small boys stomped his foot angrily – honestly, what an inappropriate behaviour, how on Merlin’s flat earth were they bringing up children today!? – and launched himself towards Potter who almost got knocked about with the force of the impact, but managed to catch him nevertheless, laughed and picked him up in his arms, clearly happy to console him. She quickly paid a look to her son’s face – and there was no reaction whatsoever. He kept on staring at the groups as if nothing significant had happened and she felt a thin icy ray of hope cut through the hot coals of her anxiety: perhaps she was wrong, perhaps there was a proper explanation after all!

Surely nearly anything could have been better than... _this_... oh, whatever this was, but it looked like some sort of infatuation... with Potter, of all people! He was _a man_ , for Merlin’s sake! A half-blood, and a man, a married-man, a father as of late! Of course, the man was also rich and influential, not at all bad looking and – most importantly - they didn’t come much more powerful than him! Still, she found herself exhaling a breath of relief she didn’t know she was holding back. No, definitely not Potter, another careful look at her son had told her that.

There! The worst calamity seemed to have been avoided. She knew he would not be quite so profane and irrational as to fall for the Saviour, she just knew it! Imagine the scandal! But a fresh wave of concern washed over her when she paid another quick glance to a pale face of her beloved child reflecting deeply-wrought misery and all that incredible want she could not even begin to comprehend. There was someone else, then... With Potter out of the equation there weren’t many options left.

She looked at the group of people around Potter once again, perusing them carefully – and tried to discern logically what – or who – could her son be staring at so persistently. Surely the children were out of the question – if Draco was interested in kids he would be more than welcome to make a few of his own – could it be _her_ , then? The brilliant girl?

Well, certainly no longer a girl, with three children under her belt and clearly not _that_ brilliant either – after all, she had married a Weasley! Perhaps she thought him a good party and from a standpoint of a Muggle-born witch - he might have even seemed as one, Pureblood and well-connected as he was, but anybody who meant _anything_ in the old wizarding world knew you simply don’t just go and marry a Weasley! They were blood-traitors! And as poor as the church mice, for Merlin’s sake! And that was one sin _no one_ could forgive, not even those who were willing to turn a blind eye when it came to the affairs of pure blood in the brave new world. In Narcissa Malfoy’s world poverty just didn’t come with an excuse.

Brilliant or not – Hermione, that was her name, Hermione Granger, how could she forget!? – was nothing special - what would her Draco possibly want to have to do with her?! Even before her marriage to a Weasley she had hardly been a favourable party! Nothing extraordinary to look at, unmanageable hair, bossy attitude, questionable resources, no pedigree, no connections to speak of... There was barely anything in her favour! Well, perhaps that she was a _woman_ after all, clearly capable of bearing children, ambitious and driven – there was hardly an article in the Prophet these days regarding the Ministry that didn’t mention her name – she wasn’t _terrible_ to look at and if she helped Potter win a war, perhaps there was some wit under all that hair that could be worked with!

Still... the implications were preposterous - her beautiful well-bred son could do so much better! A Mudblood, as Lucius liked to call them... A _married_ Mudblood! The only worse thing would be a Muggle and even the thought of informing Lucius of his son’s unfortunate choice send shivers down her spine. Faith couldn’t possibly be so cruel! This must be prevented at all costs!

But in that moment the tall redheaded man Potter was talking to this whole time leaned down from his impressive height and swept the little ginger princess into his arms and spun her around playfully a couple of times. And when he stopped he was facing Narcissa - and in that moment she knew. She knew she had found him. She barely had to look at her son and the awed thunder-struck expression on his face to confirm her suspicions, because it was just _that_ obvious. Arthur Weasley’s youngest son was a thing of perfection. Because that was who this man must have been, there was no doubt in her mind about it.

She only had to look at him once to see what Draco saw in him, because – frankly – she saw it, too. It was not only his eyes, so radiant in a smile and so intensely blue she could see the spectacular colour from afar… nor was it the stunning contrast between that fiery river of silken hair and milky white skin specked golden with most adorable freckles… not even the tall muscular posture that made the terrible tight Muggle clothes he was wearing look awfully appealing and mouth-watering… It was something untamed deep down inside those intense brilliant eyes, full of splendid joie-de-vivre; something soft and sexy inside that gorgeous smile that held a promise of a million thrills; some sort of inner strength – a strange calm confidence he radiated as if his presence alone was promising safety, loyalty and love. She saw all that and more and she finally understood. The man was magnificent. Draco never stood a chance.

She watched him spin his little daughter around until they were nothing but a blur made of light and speed and she got almost as entranced by this magical man as the rest of the spectators. When she finally remembered to glance at her son, the light in his eyes almost stopped her heart. He had never seen him more beautiful. His eyes, all liquid silver moonlight, were drinking in the beloved image as if they could never get enough; she could almost feel the raw hungry need radiating from him and she knew then for certain: her son fell in love and it was with this man. The disaster could hardly be worse.

But all of the sudden there was commotion and the magical moment was instantly broken. The other little boy, up until this moment held firmly by his adamant mother, somehow managed to free his hand from her steely grip and dove like a cormorant into the crowd of tightly packed legs and bodies in front of him and disappeared from her view instantly. Narcissa could feel the mother’s shrill cry to her bones, when suddenly her legs almost gave underneath her. Because Draco, her beautiful fragile sad, sad son, suddenly moved with a lightning speed of a snake in strike and dove in right after him… And the path they took led straight towards the fire.

Her heart was suddenly somewhere in her temples, whooshing loudly like a giant pendulum along with a rush of blood and she had her wand in her hand before she could think of how very wrong and against regulations this was. This was _her son_ ; his safety, _his life_ might be at stake and no silly meaningless rules applied! Where were there, for Merlin’s sake!? What if she missed them coming out and they would stumble into the fire before she could help it!? The thought burnt like an iron ring against her head and the thought of losing her son was unbearable. She knew in that moment she could deal with anything, any darned thing, a challenge of any sorts life had in stock to throw at her – but this, losing him. She could not lose him.

Yet she almost did. The little boy came stumbling out of the sea of limbs with force and she gripped her wand tightly to do something – freeze the fire, stop the time, cause an incident between the world of magical and Muggle world of epic proportions, anything it took – but for all her speed she would have been too late, because her darling son was no longer running, he was flying through the air. Somehow, with the strength that must have resided somewhere deep in that desperate passionate soul of his, her son launched himself after the child he could not have known very well, risking his life recklessly, as if he was out to prove just how much he was willing for sacrifice for something of _his_.

Amidst the panicked screams he had knocked the careless creature to the ground, immobilized him and immediately rolled them over, away from the fire, as if he did that routinely every day. In the commotion that ensued she had lost the sight of him temporarily, but it was just as well, because her knees nearly betrayed her. As much as she wanted to run to him, hug him and hold him and scold him and tell him what a stupid, _stupid_   thing to do this was – she could hardly move. She hadn’t come this close to losing him in a very, very long time and it had suddenly put things in a very different perspective. Anything but that, she had thought in her prayers, and she had meant it.

To make the right decision, she needed more hands-on information, she needed to see and hear and experience first hand what was it between her son and the Weasley boy that was making Draco both, morosely depressed and feverishly elated. So he made a short neat business of disillusioning herself and she cut her way through the crowd to witness the inevitable confrontation. She just hoped her moments of weakness didn’t make her miss anything important. Moving through a crowd of Muggles disillusioned with a purpose to remain unnoticed was no business for beginners and in spite of her expertise in the service of darkness it took her a few valuable moments to break through the crowd of nosy spectators, gathered around her son and the reckless boy he had ventured to rescue with so little thought to himself.

The little boy, squashed in the arms of his hysterical mother was the first thing she saw and then her heart almost stopped. Her beautiful proud son was cradled in the arms of Arthur Weasley’s son and he looked every bit as if there was no place he’d rather be. The tall redheaded man held him close, too close, arms locked protectively behind his back, Draco’s face resting safely on the massive chest and from her son’s dazed surrendered expression she could very well discern how very much of himself he let go in this man’s arms. It definitely didn’t look as if this was their first time holding on to each other like this; they looked much more like long lost lovers who had found each other at long last. The redheaded man nuzzled against her son’s silver blond hair gently, almost as if he was dying to kiss it and he whispered a few soft words only for the blond to hear and the stunned tortured smile on her son’s face told Narcissa he just got everything he was hoping to hear.

From up close, Arthur’s son was even more heart-stopping, if that was even possible. His eyes burned with fierceness, the irises so blue they simply screamed magic, the infamous Weasley hair had all the lustre of the flames and the very silkiness of water, his freckles only accentuated his creamy skin and long lean muscles, he was impossibly tall and built like a pagan God of old. Yes, as always, her son’s taste was impeccable. This was an exceptionally formidable specimen of a wizard.  

She barely remembered the lanky grime-covered boy the Snatchers dragged into her home all those years back, but he certainly didn’t resemble this mountain of a man, stretched so protectively over her son as if this was his proper and rightful place in this world. And she knew, no, she could _see_ how her poor son craved the feeling of being protected, safe, loved; he must have been in heaven being sheltered and caressed by this magnificent man. Oh, yes, they were lovers; there was no doubt about it in her mind! One only had to look at the force with which her beautiful son clung onto the redhead’s shirt, as if he was hoping never to let go, while the blue eyes above his head burned with dark subdued fire of possession and want that was making her shiver… Gods, this was all wrong… but they were perfect together!

A Weasley, then. Ronald, if she recalled her husband’s ranting at lunch correctly. Son of Arthur, curiously enough her first knight in shining armour, and Molly, the prettiest girl the angular and too skinny first-year Narcissa had ever seen. If she thought from that perspective, it was hardly surprising that at least one of their litter turned out to be so breath-taking. Molly Prewett was the hottest item among the seventh-years and everyone’s jaw hit the ground when she chose an outright oddity like Arthur Weasley, who was infamous for his mad experiments that - more often than not - landed him and half of the Hogwarts staff at the infirmary for the day and, on more than one occasion, almost blew up the entire school. Everyone was shocked out of their skin – everyone, but the quiet and shy Narcissa Black. The distant memory quite unexpectedly still brought a smile to her face.

She never forgot those blue, blue eyes that met her the first moment when she disembarked the Hogwarts express and landed in a strange place that was to be her home for the next seven years. She was weak for her age and Bella would only mock her, if she asked for her help, so she tried to get her humongous suitcase out of the train all by herself, but she had failed miserably, tripped over under its weight and would have ended up on the train-tracks if she hadn't been caught by a surprisingly strong arm which pulled her up with no evident effort and kept her gigantic suitcase well under control. She looked up to thank him appropriately the way Maman had taught her, but the words died on her lips when she looked straight into the eyes of most brilliant blue she had ever seen and she almost forgot to breathe, when the tall wiry boy with impossibly red hair gave her one of those radiant lopsided smiles she later learnt were his trademark.

“Watch it, little girl,” he murmured absent-mindedly as he straightened her up and handed her the embarrassing suitcase. “You’re much too pretty to end up under the train on your first day here.”

No one else had ever called her pretty before! It was always Bella with her dark wild beauty that got all the compliments and now this man gave a compliment out of the blue and she could feel the heat of her embarrassment and joy creeping into her cheeks, tinting them pink and she was terribly ashamed that she should blush so! But he was just… such a scoundrel, wasn’t he?! And for Merlin’s sake, why did he had to smile like this, like the sun shone out of his eyes, while no one in their family ever smiled at all! No one! Well, perhaps her cousin Sirius did, but it was usually an insolent mean grin that meant you better keep your distance or deal with the consequences – but this boy’s smile was not like that! It was kind and nice and warm and it made her feel all happy and fuzzy on the inside.

And his eyes… gosh, what a spectacular colour! They clashed terribly with his dreadful ginger hair, of course, and Maman would certainly have a lot to say about that – but Maman wasn’t here and Narcissa was free to admire anyone she liked. And she found it annoying and completely insulting when a loud angry female voice called from behind his back and ended her reverie:

“Arthur Weasley! You get here _this minute_ and stop flirting with the first-years! For Merlin’s sake, Weasley, how pathetic are you!? You _promised_ to help me get them into the boats and it’s turned into this terrible disorganized calamity, because _you_ , Mr. Knight-in-Shining-Armour, decided it was more important to catch the suitcases of damsels in distress than to do what you were sent here to do! By Merlin’s unsavoury beard, _Weasley_ , if you’re going to cost me my Head Girl badge, I’m going to make you eat it, no magic involved, you terrible slacking prat!”

Needless to say, Narcissa was quite shocked by the garish colourful language, but she was even more flabbergasted when the tall lanky boy suddenly smiled even more brilliantly and for a moment there she could see his face flash an expression, that she would years later be able to identify as “completely smitten”. He turned away from her without another word and walked towards his abuser, a beautiful redheaded girl in impeccably straightened robes that hugged her many enticing curves most favourably – and who currently seemed to hold the bulk of the attention of the male population on the platform. Boys were literally drooling, quite distasteful, really, but when Arthur spoke, his voice was just as dreamy and unfazed as when it was, when he spoke to Narcissa.

“No need to get your knickers in a twist, Prewett,” he spoke with a poorly disguised amusement in his voice and Narcissa could barely hold back a shocked gasp at the word “ _knickers_ ” – my, oh, my, the boy really was a shocking scoundrel! “If you want me, you only need to say it, Molls, no need to shout it loud enough to wake the dead, you know…”

“Why, you, impossible…” Narcissa’s heart was suddenly in the throat when she saw the honey-coloured eyes of the redheaded beauty flash with rage and her wand was suddenly pointing at the lanky boy’s heart, but she was surprised to hear him chuckle softly in response and point out calmly:

“And how is harming me _not_ going to get your badge removed, Prewett? You wouldn’t risk everything you’ve worked for so hard for the past 6 years over me, would you now?”

The girl’s eyes shone with even more passion, if that was even possible, and Narcissa thought quietly that they might actually catch on fire if the girl got any more livid.

“Don’t tempt me, Weasley!” she hissed through gritted teeth, but Narcissa saw her hero smile meekly and just walk past her as if he wasn’t in the least afraid of her hexing him in the back.

“Don’t keep me waiting by the boats for too long, Molls, you never know when another such… lovely distraction comes along,” his eyes glanced across his shoulder at Narcissa kindly and when he casually winked at her she could yet again feel the terrible blush rise in her cheeks. And suddenly the scorching amber eyes of the redheaded beauty were on her and she had never seen so terrifying yet mesmerising a sight – the girl truly was majestic in her anger. She approached her quietly and Narcissa thought her heart was going to escape from her throat out in the open.

“Name?” the gorgeous Head Girl asked her uncommonly calmly, though a blind man could tell that there was a terrific storm going on underneath her composed exterior shell.

“Narcissa,” she said quietly and then remembered that might not be enough and added quickly: “Narcissa Black.”

“Well… Narcissa Black,” said the Head Girl slowly, accentuating every word and then unexpectedly leaned into her closely and hissed barely audibly in a livid threatening voice: “Keep your hands away from him, little damsel, or I’ll break your every finger! Arthur is… _off limits_!” she concluded, her hushed voice quivering strangely on the last couple of words.

“Welcome to Hogwarts, little damsel!” she then said politely, yet acidly in a dark edgy voice, before she turned around hastily and followed the elusive redheaded boy swiftly. It took Narcissa _forever_ , or at least a good part of the year to shake the unfortunate nick name, and even longer to shake an even more inappropriate blush that pestered her every time she accidentally ran into a lanky seventh-year boy, who smiled – and sometimes winked - at her when their paths crossed in the hallways. She didn’t, didn’t, _didn’t_ have a crush on him, _Merlin, no,_ there was never anyone but Lucius for her infatuated eyes - yet there was something about the blue-eyed “ _mad genius, emphasis on mad_ ” as Bella liked to call him derogatively, that brought a smile to her face and made her feel appreciated.

She could never quite understand what he saw on the obnoxious temperamental girl – Molly, Molly Prewett was her name, she soon learnt - for she was far too crude for Narcissa’s refined taste of all things proper, but the Head girl was so pretty she was not short of suitors in spite of her razor-blade tongue and Narcissa assumed it was just one of those “boy” things, like infatuation with flying, Quidditch and curvy girls. It seemed that in spite of their constant bickering Arthur and Molly were pretty much a sealed deal and when Molly finally lost patience with a fidgeting redhead and threw a ladle of freshly-brewed love-potion at him across the Potions classroom – perhaps in a fit of anger or with a more subtle agenda to make him come out to her – then her Head Girl badge was more endangered than a vampire in the sun, because it was soon impossible to walk _anywhere_ around the Hogwarts estate without catching a glimpse of those two snogging each other stupid. Quite distasteful, really, not to mention inappropriate, but Arthur had a reputation for ignoring the rules and it seemed that Molly was willing to throw _her_ reputation along with her scholastic achievements to the bottom of the lake for the lovely redhead after all.

They only shared breathing space for a year and Narcissa soon forgot about Arthur Weasley when the  charismatic Lucius took his rightful place by her side. It wasn’t until years later when their paths, the paths of herself and her husband, crossed with those of the captivating redhead and his scary wife in a most unpleasant of manners that put them at the extreme opposites of everything – good and bad, rich and poor, influential and insignificant. For reasons quite unbeknownst and incomprehensible to her, her husband deeply despised the Weasleys and above all - simply _loathed_ Arthur, openly, unabashedly and from the bottom of his black pureblood soul. He could never find words harsh or derogatory enough to refer to him; for Lucius, Arthur Weasley was the epitome of everything that was wrong with the wizarding world, desperate to re-define itself in a rapidly changing reality in which the Muggles refused to take the traditional position of the disadvantaged race. For her husband, Arthur was the devil himself, just slightly more dangerous with his delusional worship of the Muggle world. If he ever found out….

Narcissa’s mouth dried at the very thought of what Lucius might do should it come to his attention that his very own son, his beloved Draco, the pupil of his eye, the most prized possession of the House of Malfoy, fell for one of Arthur’s children. His _son_ , of all things, not even the daughter! It would be bad enough if Draco was yearning after Ginevra Weasley – Lucius considered her all but tainted for her intimate relationship with the half-blood Potter – but she was a pureblood witch after all, capable of giving the House of Malfoy its rightful heir – and she supposed that with time Lucius could be persuaded to see the benefits of such a liaison. But Arthur’s son…

Lucius wouldn’t have given a rat’s tail about how stunning he was, that he was a Pureblood after all and that Draco clearly couldn’t find his smile outside of his embrace. He would have only seen _a man_ , Arthur’s son, his poor, badly-mannered, very much married son. A _man_ , who couldn’t give the house of Malfoy its much desired heir, wouldn’t bring along any gold and even his war-won reputation would come at the prize of an army of undesirable relatives – Veelas, part-Werewolves, _Arthur_...

 _Impossible_. That’s what this was. Not happening. And in the same instant she realized there was an _additional_ complication.

Because _he_ was there all of the sudden, still cradling the redheaded child in his lap and Narcissa Malfoy had never seen Harry Potter look so murderous. The green eyes were alight with alertness, everything in his posture just _breathing_ hatred, and he looked so ready to strike her fingers found their way around the holder of her wand before she could remember putting them there. It was clear as day that he was beyond livid and one didn’t need Salazaar’s magnificent brain to figure out what this was all about: Potter was jealous. He was jealous of her child seeking comfort and love in the embrace of his chosen one and she instinctively knew this was no ordinary jealousy between mates and the intruder – Draco has clearly walked deeply into another man’s territory.

How very interesting.... Not only was Ron Weasley already married - he also already belonged... to Potter, of all people and, really, the situation just _couldn’t_ get any worse. Just the call of his name, “ _Ron!_ ”, made the redhead push her son gently out of his embrace and by the press of Draco’s mouth and rapidly closed eyes as if he was just not up to the reality outside Ron Weasley’s arms she realized how very devastated he was by the simple gesture. But the redhead looked at his livid best mate strangely unapologetic and perhaps it was this silent defiance that gave her son strength to pull himself up and stand his ground like a true Malfoy facing the force of nature that was the Saviour.

“Why...” Potter started, his legendary eyes still screaming bloody murder, when he was casually interrupted by the warm rumbling voice, adamant and completely fearless:  “He just saved my son, Harry. Surely you must have noticed.”

Even his calm, dark voice had a note of... oh, certain _carnality_ , danger, appeal about it that made her skin prickle and she could very well imagine her poor infatuated Draco wanting to hear his name whispered in the way that would make his blood boil. She knew him inside out, knew him better than he knew himself and she knew he’d never be able to leave this fire, defiance, protectiveness and warmth behind. This Weasley boy was one of a kind. And it seemed that Potter was well aware of that - and was ready to protect what was his tooth and nail.

This was getting more impossible by the moment. And she hasn’t even figured out what was the wife’s position in this terrible calamity! Was she really this oblivious? Was she aware that she was just a cover for a relationship between her two best friends that went far beyond the friendship? How much did she know of what went on between her beautiful husband and Draco? She was too beside herself to be readable to Narcissa’s astute eyes, but she knew if the woman was really half as smart as she was rumoured to be, Draco had another formidable opponent to conquer.

A million scenarios were compiling in Narcissa’s head, one more terrible than the other and she just couldn’t decide which would be a worse way to go: break the news to her husband and let him tear it all apart in his rage – or crush her son’s heart by telling him this could never be. Hermione Granger’s fit of gratefulness was welcome, because it gave her more time to observe everyone carefully, half desperate to find some sign to tell her what on Merlin’s lovely earth was she supposed to do! Her heart squeezed in her chest when she watched the arrogant Potter all but interrogate her son, confirming her slowly forming opinion that no matter how hard this was for Draco, it was only going to get harder and he’d be better off giving this up for good and as soon as possible. She also knew that this was never going to happen – Draco was a Malfoy after all and once they sunk their teeth into something they’d sooner tear it apart than let go.

Merlin, Lucius was going to be livid! From where she stood it seemed as if it was just a matter of time before something gave and the precious relationships would collapse like a house of cards. There was no telling what he was capable of doing when irrational – she’d make sure he wouldn’t hurt Draco, but she wouldn’t be able to stop him from disowning him and she just knew he’d _love_ an excuse to go after his redheaded lover – and that meant taking on the whole clan of Weasleys and whatnot creatures!

Her biggest fear, rooted back there in that blasted war, was about to come to life: that she would once be forced to choose between her son and her husband. Narcissa could barely imagine life without Lucius after all these years; however the thought of losing her son was unbearable. He was the one thing that justified her existence, she was determined to see him happy and now _this_... unimaginable calamity had happened and the thought of his eventual happiness seemed as elusive as it was ever going to be.

But the worst of it was – Lucius would be right this time. Ron Weasley, his stunning looks, pureblood status and war-time merits aside, was a married man with a powerful ruthless lover aside and as such a _dreadful_ party.  She knew if she let her logical brain make all the decisions, she wouldn’t have hesitated in advising her son to give him up and she would have certainly employed her considerable resources to keep them apart. As she watched Draco turn away to leave with bitterness and sorrow carefully stored deeply at the bottom of the grey eyes, only for the most careful observant to see, she had almost reached a decision that _this_ was the path she was going to take, even if it meant breaking her son’s heart – better done sooner than later – when suddenly the redheaded man called behind her son and Draco stopped as if he was under the Imperius curse and turned towards him.

And the hope that lit up his face and made his eyes glow silver broke her heart all over again: she could not do this. She could not work against him to make him miserable. This was her beloved Draco after all, her only son, who deserved all the happiness in the world – and by gods, he was entitled to reach out for it! She wasn’t worth the title of his mother if she meant to stand in his way when he did! She would help instead, she knew she would. It wasn’t in her nature to stand by and watch men muck it all up!

And because this was her stubborn Malfoyian son, she somehow sensed this was not going to go smoothly. Stubborn, proud and independent, not to mention as private a person as they came, there was a good chance Draco would refuse her advice and her assistance. But she would never know unless she tried, would she? She needed to talk to him and she could only hope against hope that he would miraculously decide to open up to her, so she could see his true intentions. And to that Weasley boy, Ronald, she needed to talk to him as well, she promptly decided. He was at the centre of it after all and how he managed to keep the fragile balance so far, by skill or sheer dumb luck, was beyond her! But Merlin himself won’t be able to help him if he was merely toying with her son’s heart, she’d make sure of that!

Though now... this very moment when she watched him talk to her son, with total disregard to Potter’s darkening looks and his wife’s belated, but finally awoken attention – those words, that last look he paid Draco... she didn’t think so. There was something underneath those simple words of acknowledgement, gratitude and farewell; a soft but solid sentiment in that look of splendid blue that spoke of true, deeply running feeling that reached out to her son and made him aglow with happiness. If the most innocent of words by this alluring man could light up his eyes like that and put a radiant smile he could barely keep hidden onto her son’s face – by gods, how magnificent _were_ they together?

She could care less about Lucius’s pureblood ramblings, the war had taught her a precious, bloody lesson that all fall alike in the end, but there was something to be said about the old magic residing inside the two pureblood heirs coming together. As far as she knew – Weasleys and Malfoy never mixed, not once in the long history of both families carefully recorded in the dusty, massive and ancient scrolls Mother insisted she study in her youth – so there was no way of knowing what kind of magic would result in their encounter. But from what she had witnessed it was a terrifically strong kind, she could almost feel their bond through the crowd, reaching out to each other like invisible greedy fingers. It would be unforgivable to destroy something as majestic as this. It would also not stop Lucius from trying.

As she watched her son wander away with a poorly disguised expression of pure bliss of his face she knew it was imperative that she talked to him tonight. She had never seen him like this, so... _transformed_   into this creature filled with light and joy; he looked as he could barely think straight and it was her primary task for tonight to intercept him before he could slip and give himself away to Lucius. Even someone as self-absorbed as her husband would surely have noticed so marked a transformation that made their ghost-like son suddenly appear as if he was walking a foot above the ground, glowing with that special warmth, beauty and invincibility only love could grant. Lucius could be… oblivious, however, he was not blind and far from stupid. And today’s clash of wills would have made him particularly alert! He could have guessed, she was certain he could have and if he by her son’s blind folly or any other means pried it out of Draco, who it was, that made him change so, then… She wouldn’t even allow herself to think along those lines!

She knew her husband to the core and the depth of hatred he was capable of could still make her shiver - though she would never show him that, he was not a man used to tolerating weakness. And now his son went and did something as unspeakable as offering his heart to a Weasley and Narcissa just knew that without her intervention this affair had a good potential to end in tragedy.

On one side there was Potter with all his blunt hatred for Draco – honestly, she did not see looks like these cast since _He_ had fallen and it made her wonder if there was any truth in the rumours that there was a part of Him stuck in the boy once and how much damage it had done while it dwelled in there. On the other side, a more acute and present danger, was Lucius and his unabashed, uncompromising hatred for all things Weasley. There was not a shred of doubt in her mind that her husband would be willing to annihilate Arthur’s son if he as much as suspected that he was in any way responsible for Draco’s reluctance to find himself a bride and continue the Malfoy line. He would have gotten rid of anyone standing in the way of so noble a goal, as he probably saw it, but if it was Arthur’s son – she was willing to bet all her considerable wealth that his life wasn’t worth a knut if Lucius ever found out.

No, however they did this, it must be done discretely, for Merlin’s sake; she could only hope Draco was willing to be reasonable about it! A relationship out in the open was not an option, not for anyone involved and she needed to find a way to make her stubborn Malfoyian son understand that! There was no time to be lost, she needed to get to him before Lucius did and prevent the worst. Once this is done and her son is out or immediate danger, she will think this over properly and see if there was a way to reconcile the two – find a way to keep Lucius happy and help Draco get what he wanted so badly... And if her son was too obstinate and smitten to listen to reason, perhaps Arthur’s son was willing to be more… _practical_. She was not out of options yet, but now she needed to hurry – their lives could take radically different turns depending on whom Draco meets upon his return.

When she apparated into the discretely lit lobby of the Manor she was somewhat relieved to find out that she seemed to have beaten her son to coming home, yet a moment later a fresh wave of anxiety washed over her – what if he chose not to come home this evening? Was he meeting his lover then? It did not seem likely, however, she could not be certain! How was she supposed to intercept him and have him confide in her if his arrival was to be unpredictable? She could not stay in a lobby the whole night, could she now, Lucius was nothing if not a creature of habit and he would be checking her quarters – she cast a quick _Tempus_ \- any time now!

She decided to give it a few more minutes, be what it may – she’ll just have to find a way to keep Lucius away from Draco until they can find time to talk, won’t she – and she wrapped her arms around her chest from a sudden feeling of cold and anxiety. Darned children! She didn’t understand how anybody could have more than one, a proper chest of worries they were! As far as she was concerned Arthur and Molly were either fit for sainthood or just plain _mad_ to have had such an army of them! She couldn’t imagine investing so much of herself into more than one person, she would have gone properly insane over the years!

Her innerved flow of thoughts was finally, mercifully interrupted by the soft pop of apparition that made the object of her every thought this evening appear right in front of her, eyes closed, face still beautifully lit up with a dreamy smile. She was flushed with a bizarre mixture of relief, love and anger at the sight of her beloved son, looking so smitten with love it was just plain ridiculous, and she found it hard to keep her expression impassive. She wanted to hug him as much as she wanted to scold him and she crossed her arms on her chest to create an invisible barrier between them so she could at least attempt to keep the upper hand. And when he finally opened his eyes the flabbergasted expression of disbelief in them gave her the leverage she needed:

“Good evening, son,” she greeted calmly, almost coolly and then it was time to play her subtle game.


	42. Paint it Black

_"Let me be the only one_  
 _To keep you from the cold_  
 _Now the floor of heaven's lain_  
 _With stars of brightest gold_  
  
 _They shine for you - they shine for you_  
 _They burn for all to see_  
 _Come into these arms again_  
 _And set this spirit free..."_

Annie Lennox, Love song for a vampire

 

Fuck, fuck, fuck! He should have known better! He shouldn’t have been so bloody reckless as to come to the Manor tonight! He wouldn’t have, if he had any wits left about him, but the warmth of Ron’s unexpected embrace, that whispered half promise and that god-damn sex-charged brain-melting last look he gave him that left him with shaky knees and drunk with mad hope successfully obliterated any remains of rational thought that might have been strolling about his head prior to this evening. He was just so bloody infatuated and poisoned by his presence, wasn’t he? - and he forgot to be careful.

And this, here, was his mother, whose cunningness and sharp wit together with unfathomable bravery was one of the cornerstones of the Dark lord’s downfall. A woman he loved dearly, the only woman he ever had any love for. And she stood there with her cold icy eyes like an avenging angel and he just knew he was not up to her this evening. Something in her adamant posture made him think that this was _not_ going to be an encounter he could pass easily. And he had a instant horrible hunch that somehow... she _knew_. What if she...? But how could she...?

Suddenly he felt how very bone-tired he was, how very much he needed the privacy of his room to sink into his bed and dream of him. Not _this_. He couldn’t have this tonight, not another confrontation. He would be ruined and she, of all people, had it in her to wear him down into confessing... And somehow this thought took roots and provided him with a glimpse of an unorthodox solution. If he learnt anything from his arch-enemy, was a constant drill: Attack is the best form of defence. And Potter, admittedly, was the best.

He couldn’t try an evasion, this was what she clearly expected, standing there in her “ _Thou shalt not pass”_ pose - what if he gave her what she least expected, a hefty dose of naked truth instead? It’s not like he could keep his pretence up for much longer and... this was his mom after all and he needed an ally badly. Maybe his honesty could buy him one and they didn’t come much better than his mother.

And if not... perhaps this affair was destined to come to light in the end and... it wasn’t as if he could be much more miserable than he was those past few weeks, was it? He knew no greater grief than what he had just been through in Ron’s absence and everything else sort of paled by comparison.

In the brief moment before he opened his mouth, Draco could hardly believe what he was about to do; couldn't believe how much strength this rebellious impossible love he felt for the elusive redhead granted him. He knew he was a coward for a large part of his life and now he found himself here, ready to fight tooth and nail with the one person that knew all his weaknesses. But he would have done that and a thousand things more for his chance to be with Ron, he couldn’t imagine going back to a half-life he led before he found himself and his happiness in the embrace of his fiery lover. Ron was worth it, all of it. The misery he caused him by running away; the emptiness he was condemned to when he couldn’t be around; the sleepless nights he spent despairing over his fucked up addiction to this crazy brutal love he could not have; a confrontation with his magnificent mother – all of it. Every last bit. He just gave that much in return.

So it didn’t matter how this ended, not really. If Ron crushes his hopes tomorrow, there won’t be enough of him left to go against and defeat. If he decides to give them a chance, _any kind of chance_ , however... his heart soared at the very thought. Ron’s love was his armour, it made him invincible and no one could hurt him while he felt himself wrapped in its impenetrable warmth. So the confrontation with his mother it was.

" _Don't! She could be your worst adversary_ ," his panicked brain whispered in the last attempt to stop him – but somehow, deep down in his heart of Black fire, he didn’t think so. Time to find out.

He summoned the last atoms of strength he didn’t know he had and pulled himself to his full height not to look apologetic – this game was a tug-of-war and the first to show weakness was as good as doomed. Then he smiled as blissfully as he could muster and extended his arm towards his mother, touching her forearm lightly almost affectionately.

“Good evening, mother,” he returned her greeting as courteously as he was taught and he immediately recognised his unexpected kindness had the effect he was hoping to achieve: it came as a surprise and he had to be quick to take advantage of her confusion or he could never hope to win this.

“Do you mind if we take this to my quarters?” he asked calmly, almost matter-of-factly. “I don’t suppose this will be one of our... _lighter_ conversations and I’d rather enjoy it in the privacy of my room if it is all the same to you, yes?”

He looked for her agreement with unreadable grey eyes and a politely arched eye-brow and when she nodded almost imperceptibly, still somewhat doubtful regarding her reaction to his bold attempt at taking control, he offered her his elbow most gallantly, so she could hang onto it the way etiquette dictated and smiled sweetly:

“Excellent. Then let’s not waste any more time, shall we?”

And he disapparated them. 

“There,” he said quietly when they re-appeared in his bedroom. “All better. I apologize for somewhat... unorthodox action, I really wasn't up to all those stairs tonight. Please, Mother, do take a seat.”

He motioned her silently to take a chair by the elegant coffee table where he sometimes took his solitary breakfast, but she turned around and sat on his bed instead as if staging a silent rebellion. He knew then, she had found her footing again. Nothing but to take the bull by the horns, then.

So he simply dropped his weight by her side and desperately tried to ignore how very much he simply wanted to collapse into this very bed and just sleep... but he asked calmly instead: “How much do you know?”

“I saw you,” she said simply and momentarily she knocked the breath out of him. But once she spoke, there was no holding back the flood of her worries and frustration at the terrible discovery:

“I saw you tonight, Draco. I went and I spied on you against everything good and proper – but you've left me so anxious and troubled that I saw no other way. So I followed you to that god-awful Muggle park and it was almost the end of me to see you stare at those people. At first I thought it was him, the Potter boy, you were staring at so intently as if you tried to devour him with your eyes - and as impossible as I found it, I had tried to find a million and one excuse and justification for what I mistakenly took for your affection for him. He's the Saviour after all, not at all bad looking, rich and as powerful as they come – who wouldn't be smitten, I told myself.

But then I observed you – and him – for a while longer and it soon downed on me that it wasn't him at all, was it? You can't imagine my relief when I reached that particular conclusion – only to be sunk into an even deeper pit of worry at the sight of your sad, infatuated face, my lovely. I knew it was someone else then and at first it didn't seem as if there was much of a choice, really – I saw _her_ there, that brilliant Muggle-born witch you went to school with – Potter's companion, that... Hermione, was it? Of all the odd names... But it wasn't her either, no, as hard as it would be to take... Merlin is my witness I had tried to find her acceptable and I've almost succeeded for she is a strong woman in a powerful position, with reasonably good looks and apparently a set of solid brains aside; ambitious, driven and above all, capable of bearing healthy children... but it was not to be. He only needed to turn around and face me and I knew...

It is him, isn't it? The Weasley boy, Arthur's son?” she finally looked at him sharply and he nodded almost imperceptibly.

“Merlin help us...” she exhaled quietly as if the last of her hopes were buried and she unexpectedly covered his bone-chilled hand with the warm elegant palm of her own hand and said with barely concealed compassion: “My poor child.”

“His name is Ron... Ronald,” Draco spoke suddenly as if he couldn't wait to be finally able to share his sweet little secret, burning a hole through his heart, with someone. “He's Potter's best friend... and... more. But it doesn't matter, nothing does. I love him,” he said simply and looked his mother straight in the eye as if he had nothing else for her but the blunt naked truth.

“I love him above and beyond anything I ever thought possible. No one's ever made me feel this way before, not even close. He was my first... the first person to kiss me,” he quickly added when he saw her blue eyes grow wide in disbelief. “Back in school... we were 14 at the time... Merlin, what I _fool_ I was,” he gave a bittersweet half-smile at the distant memory that shaped his whole life and gave it a different direction. “Once Potter pulled him out of the lake as his “ _thing he'd miss the most_ ” during the Triwizard Tournament I couldn't wait to jump at his jugular. I always knew there was more between them and for some reason it... made me very angry,” he tried to find words acceptable to his mother's refined vocabulary.

“I cornered him, me and my usual clique of fellow Slytherins, Vince and the lot, and I tried to make a joke out of him... only it turned out the joke was on me,” he said quietly and closed his eyes for a moment as if he was once again watching and re-watching the priceless memory in his head. The smile in the corner of his mouth was just a tad sad. “He didn't try to punch me, like he usually would. He kissed me instead. He didn't mean anything by it at the time, he only wanted to shut me up, but for me... it was.... I was never the same again. He broke something inside of me, broke through the shell of my arrogance and pride, he broke _me_. The first time I felt those soft innocent lips touch me, something connected and I was... sold. Done in. Obsessed, if you like. There was never anyone else. Only ever him. All this time. I... had tried other people, I had god-honest tried... being with them and... all the things I did with them... it never came close to that one perfect kiss. He bewitched me. I have no other words to describe it.”

He willingly ignored the bitter press of her mouth and decided he might as well spill it all – perhaps if she knew, she would understand it better, comprehend how impossible it was for him to leave Ron Weasley behind.

“Once we met at Hogwarts a couple of months back I felt it must have been our destiny that pulled us together. I sought him out first chance I got and he took me in, took me over, took me with greed and passion and no remorse, as if he knew it was ever only his right. I knew then, as I know now, that this was where I belonged. With this man.”

He looked her straight into her devastated face again and said quietly, determinately, as if that was his one truth: “Ron Weasley owns me. He owns my heart, owns everything that's worth anything about me, my life. He makes me feel warm, here, at my heart, and so very alive; his gorgeous stunning smile does, his tenderness when he's with me; his raw want and all that red-headed passion that comes to meet me every time, no excuses, no regrets, no exceptions; his quiet belonging, all the little signs that tell me he thinks about me, that he cares. So precious... How could I leave that behind? _Never_! Mom... never.”

She tried to keep her cold façade intact – and barely made it when she heard that word make it past his mouth: he had called her “ _mom_ ” - and he's only done that once before, feverish, very young and barely alive. And she knew now how very exposed and opened his heart was before her, she knew she might never again see the true Draco laid bare in front of her and her heart was beating fiercely in her chest to reach out to him, bring him closer, hug him and tell him how precious she found him. But she couldn't – this was his life, his future, the future of this family at stake – and she couldn't let her own emotions into the game. She asked as calmly and as gently as she could, surprised to hear her own voice come out so unwavering:

“You say a lot about your feelings, son, but what about him? How do you know the young man is not merely using you for... a bit of entertainment,” he lips pressed closer at the very thought. “How do you know he feels even remotely the same about you? He is married after all, you know. And - you pointed it out yourself - it seems that the most influential young wizard of our time considers him something... more than a mere friend. How could you possibly hope...”

“Because he told me so,” Draco interrupted her fiercely and he might as well have thrown a ton-heavy boulder on top of her. “He had said the words and he had shown me, time and time again, that he had meant them.”

He finally seemed to have noticed how very devastated his words have left her and he tried to explain, soften the blow, undo the worst of the damage the best he could for this was his beloved mother after all and she deserved better:

“We never talk about it,” he said quietly. “At least we never used to, not at the beginning anyway. Until about a month ago I couldn’t take it anymore; couldn’t take him not knowing how he made me feel and I blurted it out like a fool and I told him how I felt. And... it was a mistake. He ran. He... it's not like he won't have me and I know, I just _know_ he cares, he's just... in the middle of everything and he wants to make right by everyone and he... can’t. So I was the easiest thing to sacrifice,” he said with just a shade of bitterness in his voice and focused on his shoes cause he couldn’t bear to look at her worried face, surely aflood with disbelief and anger.

“He had tried to let go of me and I just... collapsed. I couldn’t take it anymore, couldn’t take life without the prospect of him. I thought he was never coming back, I honestly did, and it nearly killed me. But you see, he just doesn't have it in him to really hurt anyone, that's just the way he is. If he really didn’t care, he would have stayed away after that day – but he didn’t. He couldn’t, he told me, when he came back and I knew then he must have felt the bond between us just as strongly as I did. And he kept on coming back, day after day he did, until I was better, and I don’t think he even knew why. And then that last day he came, he lay down next to me, as I was lying in my bed barely conscious, and he whispered a quiet confession in my ear, when he thought I couldn’t hear him. He told me he couldn’t stop thinking about me, he told me that as impossible as it was, he wanted to keep me and after that he spent the night with his arms wrapped around me, watching over me, healing me with his touch alone.

And when he found me all better in the morning, none of us thought twice. We were just pulled in... We made love and he... he gave himself to me like never before, warning me it was our last time, but my heart knew better... And before he left, he told me... said it to my face, along the words of goodbye, that he loved me. That this was our dark love that could never be. It almost crushed me yet again... but it was already too late. After he had said it I could no longer leave him behind.

I followed him to Hogwarts, I would have followed him anywhere, to the end of the world if he chose, because that’s just how much I need him. I love him, Mother, I’m so in love with him I don't know which way is up or down and it's scary and it's wonderful and something I never thought I could have and something only he can give me. It always was like that between us. He is mine and I am his,” he concluded quietly, simply, staring at her face with a tiny sad smile at the edge of his mouth, as if he was strangely set free by the truth and he was now beyond the harm of her words.

All fell silent between them after that and it took Narcissa a while to gather her scattered, panicked thoughts about to ask him the pivotal question:

“But what do you plan to do with this love now, son? Where are you going to take it? How can anything come out of it, with your lives so different? You will be at Hogwarts and around each other for this year alone and then what? And what...”

“I don’t know, alright?” Draco interrupted her, something in his eyes flickering restlessly as if he had been thinking about the same issues and wasn’t able to come up with an answer. “It doesn’t depend on me, really,” he then shrugged as if he had resigned himself to the faith of not knowing and he didn’t even care about it any longer. “I’ll take whatever he has to give. However little it is. You see, I... don’t expect it to be much,” he said quietly and Narcissa found the quiet despair in those lovely grey eyes monstrous.

“I know he can’t just surrender his life to be with me, he wouldn’t do it for Potter, why should he do it for me? But if he did, Mother, _if he did_...” he looked at her with feverish silver eyes and the insane devotion in them was just as scary as the love that inspired it. “If he did, if he asked it of me, I’d leave everything behind to be with him. All of this...” he motioned towards the beautifully adorned room around them, “... it means nothing without him. It’s just worthless glitter, it has no power to make me feel happy and special and... whole. But he does.”

“Would you leave us all behind as well, then? For him? Would you, Draco?” she asked and the anger that unexpectedly flared through her voice stroke him like a whip. He paled visibly.

“Mother...” he tried to calm her down, but tonight Narcissa was too beside herself to be able to contain herself much longer. Much like his, also her marble mask had fallen to pieces.

“What if he makes you choose? Choose between us and himself? Would you follow him, Draco? Anywhere? At the risk of your father disowning you, of never being able to see me again? Would you erase me from your life so easily, son? Pretend you never had a mother, that we were never a family? Would you, son?”

“Mother... you are dramatizing. Surely it will not come that far...” he tried to calm her down in a shaky voice but cut it abruptly, when she hissed:

“ _Like hell it won’t_!”

He had never seen his mother so upset, never saw the flames of same passion that consumed him from the inside flare in her ice-blue eyes, making them shine like sapphires. Even under the days of terror under Voldemort’s reign, she was always a perfect picture of composure, control and civility - and now this... Her language itself testified how very ravaged Narcissa Malfoy was this evening.

“You speak of love, you foolish child, but I will tell you one thing: you know _nothing_ of it until you’ve had a child of your own! I’ve seen your father cry over you; the first and the only time Lucius Malfoy cried was when I placed you in his arms and he saw his own reflection in your eyes. Your father loves you, Draco, have no doubt about it – and he would be devastated if our ways should ever part. As of myself...”

She paused a little as if she was trying to gain some sort of control, but when she looked at him, staring at her with eyes wide open as if he was looking at a stranger, she realized that she was too far gone to be holding back. So she spoke, her voice only shaking a little:

“I can’t even begin to tell you how much... how strongly I feel about you, how very much I’ve worshipped and adored you from the moment you drew your first breath. I’ve always known that love was.... _sacred_ , but I never knew how very much I was capable of loving until I had you. You were everything. You _are_ everything. I betrayed the Dark Lord _for you_ , so you could find a way out of this terror, so you could have a future. I cared nothing for my own life. I love you, son, so very very much, and I want to give you the whole world. If it was down to me, I would have given you Ron Weasley without as much as a blink, I would have accepted him into this home and defended your choice fiercely in front of everyone – but this love can never be. Not like this, not out in the open, not in this house, not in front of your father.”

“I will not give him up!” Draco hissed through gritted teeth and it was one passionate, stubborn Black against another and in spite of all her anger, she couldn’t help but admire him. He was beautiful when he was fierce and she hated going against him, going against the love he defended with so much passion and integrity.

“You don't understand, Mother, you have no idea... He would never make me choose, it is not in his nature!” he almost shouted, but when he looked at her pale hurt face he stopped abruptly and she could see how hard he was fighting to hold onto his composure: “If our ways ever part, Mother, it would not be of my choice, it would be of your own doing and of the blindsided actions of Father,” he said finally, his words quieter, but no less laced with passion. “You never even met Ron and yet you would have me sacrifice the one thing that makes my heart beat and spill over with love for him, love for life. I... _need_ Ron. In any form I can have him. Please don't try to ruin it for me. This is my one chance in life to be happy. Please... don't. Mom, _don't._ ”

His voice was small as if that of a child and oh, blast, there was this word again that had the power to rock her world! When he unexpectedly took her hands into his and just squeezed them tightly as if quietly begging for mercy, she noticed how badly they were shaking and her heart twisted viciously in her chest when she looked into the tired and greyish-tinted face from up close. There were tiny creases of worry and sorrow at the corners of his pretty mouth and she had the most bizarre impulse to smooth them out with her fingers and promise him it was going to be alright.

“I do remember him, you know,” she said unexpectedly and didn't try to extract her hands from underneath his. “There's hardly anything I don't remember from that dreadful time being held captive at my own home,” she added unexpectedly bitterly. “And he looks too much like Arthur not to remember... I once knew Arthur at school and... oh, well, that's a story for another time,” she suddenly gave a small almost girlish smile at a distant memory and then her eyes went dark once again.

“I faintly remember the Snatchers bringing him in and he was the sorriest creature I have ever encountered. Emaciated, covered in gashes and bruises, the grime seeping in... Lucius's eyes lit up like torches when he realized who the boy was. He really hates Arthur, your father does. He would have hurt him, I am certain of it, if it wasn't for the more pressing matters of finding out if that disfigured person they were with was really Potter. You did well that day, son, you might have saved our future by keeping your mouth shut and offering nothing but elusive answers. But nothing would have saved Ronald if they didn't escape. Not from Lucius, it wouldn't.

You see, he blamed Arthur and the other “ _blood-traitors_ ” as he loved to call them, for the vicious displeasure and violent mood of our dark Master. It would have all been alright if they only cooperated, surrendered the rebellious scarred boy and have the new era begin, with the purebloods securing their rightful place of the elite, as it was meant to be in your father's dreadfully arrogant mind. But no, they were too stubborn, betraying their own, superior pure blood, on account of some terribly displaced sympathy for the filthy half-blood and they closed their ranks around him, effectively placing themselves among the Dark lord and the boy.

And Arthur was their ring-leader, at least in your father's hate-ridden mind he was. It would have been glorious if he was to get his hands on one of his sons... He would have played with him to his screaming end, have _no doubt_ about it,” she looked him sharply in the eye and felt the tremor of terror electrify his body as if it was her own. “I have seen the depths of your father’s hatred and cruelty, while you ever only got a glimpse, and believe me when I say that – there is no bottom to them. Remember your night in the dungeons, son? You were 11, it was Christmas and he left you there _all freezing night_ and wouldn't tell me where he took you – all of it just for failing to befriend Potter. And mind you – your father _loves_ you, Draco.”

She watched his eyes grow wide in horror when he at last understood what she was trying to say and she knew she had finally managed to reach through to him and made him listen. She couldn't afford to blunder now.

“What, exactly, do you think, Lucius would be prepared to do, if one Weasley was to crawl in bed with his beloved son, effectively blocking the Malfoy line from reproducing, smudging the Malfoy name with shame and ridicule and killing all the prospects of it ever rising to its former glory?! Your father, Draco, would stop at _nothing_ , not one thing - as cruel, illegal and destructive as it would seem.

I am not talking about mere act of disowning here, about public humiliation for both of you, nor about ostracism, isolation and destitution that man has the power to push you in; I am talking about Ron Weasley ending up on your doorsteps in body bags, a fair number of them. Your father is capable of doing it - he still has enough of his old dark ways - he _would_ do it, I’m prepared to bet every galleon I own on it - and that man  _would_   _not_ _stop_ until it is done, whatever the price. He would risk the well-being and safety of this very family, if you make him feel he’s got nothing left to lose - and doubt not: Lucius has immeasurable potential to be brutal! I pray to Merlin and to all the gods of old that you take my warning to heart - do _not_ push him in the corner, do _not_ go about provoking him; not if you value your life and the life of your beloved!"

She barely spoke the words when a solid weight of her son crushed upon her and Draco was suddenly in her arms, holding onto her neck for dear life, shivering from head to toe like a twig in frosty wind and whispering in her ear in a voice that sounded too close to sobbing:

“Please, Mother... mom... help. Merlin, I love him so, I cannot give him up... but I cannot see him harmed either, I wouldn’t live a day in a world without him. Please, mom...”

“Shhhh, calm down, my beautiful, don’t cry, precious, it’s what I came here to do, isn’t it? I told you this morning, all your secrets are safe with me and I will pay for your honesty with everything I have to give to protect you and your heart, my lovely,” she whispered soothingly in his ear and her heart broke when she felt his fragile shoulders shake under her hand in a flood of emotion he could no longer hold back.

“And him...” Draco said in a barely audible voice between two sobs he tried very hard to contain. “You must promise to protect him as well, Mother. It would do no good to protect me and leave him exposed, for Father to ruin. I would follow him, I swear I would.”

“I know that... I know, darling. I saw how you look at him and if I never knew what love looked like, I would have gotten a good glimpse of it this evening. He looks at you the same way... yet different. So... _possessive_. As if he indeed wants to keep you... And should you have any doubts that he loves you... don’t. He does. It was all over his face this evening! You know... this is all I ever wanted for you... to find someone like that, to be _loved_ like that - and it breaks my heart to deny you like this... but there is no other way. As long as your father lives, he must not know of him, do you understand me, my beautiful miserable child? You will be beyond my help if he does.”

She could feel her son, still buried in the crook of her neck, give a barely perceptible nod and she knew it was as good as she was going to get. She hugged him across the back fiercely and she couldn’t remember when she was last so in tune with another living being, so flooded with the feelings of protectiveness and love. No harm must ever come to him, she promised herself. And also... She would try her best to make him happy, she decided; he was making a sacrifice that will allow her to keep the family together and an act like this one must be repaid. And as if he could read her mind he asked her softly, still buried deeply inside her personal space:

“Will you help me then? Help us... Merlin...” He finally moved away from her a few inches and tried to wipe away his tear-streaked face discretely in a way that it almost made her smile - what a Malfoy he was even in the direst of circumstances! And as if he suddenly saw a folly of his ways, he gave a small, almost sheepish grin that made him look like an adorable little boy and when she couldn’t help herself and she wiped away the traces of tears with her thumbs as gently as she could, he exhaled as if he was finally ready to surrender himself completely.

“Gods,” he said in a quiet raspy voice. “What a mess! I don’t even know if he still wants to have anything to do with me, I tried to tell him that I do, that he’s the only one... that we’ll do this however he chooses... but I can’t risk his life now and... By Salazaar's tangled beard, why does it all have to be so complicated?! I swear to god, Mother, whatever involves Ron Weasley is made of pure chaos and disaster! I don’t know how the man survives in his life! And I want to be a part of it... so much... so very, very much...

Merlin, being in love _hurts_ . Why doesn’t anyone tell you that?! It’s a blasted disease, that’s what it is! I can’t eat, I can’t sleep right, I can’t spend two minutes doing anything, any darned thing, without my mind floating away and towards him. It’s _terrible_... and wonderful,” he finally smiled shyly, in a way that lit up his eyes and - gods, she must always see him this happy! Her heart almost skipped a beat when her child smiled at her with love and trust on his pretty face and damn her to hell and back if she’s not going to find them a way!

“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” he continued in a softer voice and smiled tiredly. “Blasted _Weasley_ ,” he exhaled and shook his head as if in disbelief. “That man will be the death of me. He really is something, mom... he really is.”

“Oh, but I know... I have seen him, remember? Your taste, darling, is as impeccable as always,” she smiled unexpectedly, sweetly, and once again knocked the wind out of her awed son. “I'd say that he is, by far and large, the most beautiful man I have seen in a while... yes, that would indeed be quite a while. He is a bit like... a diamond, rough and uncouth, but quite priceless nevertheless. Solid, brilliant - yes, quite an unforgettable man! All that muscle and physique... tall, silken flaming hair... and those eyes for a contrast, oh, my!” she suddenly laughed with a chiming voice and instantly looked 20 years younger.

“I will tell you a secret of my own, if you promise never – and I mean _never_ – to share it with any living soul, not even your... chosen one. Promise? Darling, nodding is not a promise, you must say the word! _There_... well, here it is... I'm afraid that I had the _tiniest_ , most impossible crush on Arthur Weasley as a first-year at Hogwarts – and it was all because of those gorgeous brilliant eyes I kept seeing everywhere!”

At the shocked “ _Mother!_ ”, she waved her hand dismissively and once again laughed in a ringing laughter he had never heard from her mouth before.

“Oh, shush... “ she said carelessly. “Nothing ever came out of it, of course. He only ever saw Molly and she was all over him like weed. And then the year was over and Arthur was gone and over the summer your father had realized I was going to be... as asset, so he started paying proper attention to me and Arthur was soon forgotten. But I'm afraid I never could quite forget those eyes. As soon as Ronald looked in my direction, I knew who he was and I knew... about you. It must be in your blood, love; we, the Blacks are... _vulnerable_ that way. And then he flashed that winning smile... oh, my! I don't think I was ever so worried in my life! How could I possibly persuade you to leave behind something like that! And then I saw your face and saw how he made you feel and I knew I really didn't want to: I don't think I've ever seen you so happy, darling.”

“Indeed,” mumbled Draco, slightly embarrassed – really, there _were_ limits to how much of oneself one could trust to one's mother! But he couldn't deny it: somehow she managed to make him feel all better, more confident about the future, more... at peace. And that thought brought another one along.

“I should very much like to rest now,” he murmured, suddenly dead-tired. “I promised to meet him tomorrow, to tell him... oh, I don't know what, right now my mind is as blank as a brand new scroll of parchment,” he rubbed his hands over his eyes and felt the bed move as she got up elegantly.

“But of course,” she said warmly. “If I understood you correctly, you've kept it from me that you've been quite ill... but I forgive you, because you clearly pulled through and because I suppose I understand why you omitted to inform me about it – I might be a bit... _overbearing_ and prone to... panic when it comes to your well-being,” she smiled the tiniest of smiles, suddenly again the graceful, noble lady of the Malfoy Manor.

“By all means – rest, I've got quite a lot of processing and... manoeuvring to do myself and as soon as it becomes clear what are Ronald's intentions for you,” - she cleverly kept “ _if any_ ” to herself not to upset him further - “I trust you to inform me of his decision, yes?” she looked at him questioningly with her astute eyes and he merely nodded numbly – at the moment he would have promised her his wand and half of his right hand on top of it if only she left and let him rest.

She read him as good as ever and leaned in to kiss him briefly on the cheek.

“It'll be alright, my darling, you'll see – I won't let you down,” she whispered as she pressed a perfunctory peck on his cheek and moved towards the door without further ado.

“Thank you, Mother,” she heard a soft sleepy voice call behind her when she was almost past the door-frame and when she threw one last look at him, he was already lying down, not even bothering to undress, his eyes closed, his expression peaceful.

“No one ever had a better mom...” he mumbled sleepily and then Draco Malfoy was lost to the world for that night.

“You're welcome, my love,” she whispered strangely moved and felt an urge to go back in, help him undress and tuck him in good and proper – but she knew he would be uncomfortable in the morning and she wasn't about to rattle the fragile peace-treaty between them. It was just... she simply wanted to see him loved and protected. Her magnificent brain stopped at that notion and she paused in front of a large majestic mirror adorning the hallway as an enlightening thought formed in her mind. She would have to wait for the elusive Mr. Weasley, of course, and study his intentions, but if things were going to roll in the desired direction... She suddenly paid the tiniest smile to her image in the polished crystal surface.

She may have found a solution.


	43. To love the light...

_When my life has passed_

_And I have nothing_

_I shall not take it_

_For wasted still._

_For you'll be the nothingness_

_That keeps me warm_

_Makes me wanna be_

_Makes me wanna feel._

 

“Are you... having an affair with Draco Malfoy?”

Ron stopped dead in his track, his hand frozen on the doorknob, and looked at his wife with his mouth unhinged in surprise. This evening was turning more bizarre as they went.

As soon as Draco walked away, Ron gathered his family about and motioned to Hermione, still sniffing and holding onto Freddie for dear life, that they should leave. He had enough of this place for one evening – oh, blast, just go and make that a life-time! - and he had some serious contemplating and soul-searching to do before he was to meet Draco Malfoy the following day.

“Ron!”

 _Fuck_... in all that bloody Armageddon he almost forgot about Harry, but judging by the sound of his voice, Harry would not be so easily ignored. That one syllable of his name was loaded with more vicious emotion than an hour of shouting and he knew that he needed to close this down quickly, put an end to it before it grew up into proper argument with his kids and wife about.

“Don't, Harry... please,” he spoke in a voice that sounded exhausted even to himself and he quietly wondered when he had turned into such an expert liar. Bloody Malfoy and his Slytherin influence! Well, he might as well use it if it was there... So he took a deep breath and continued resolutely:

“I know you hate him, I know you bloody well do, but he saved my child and if it wasn't for him, you'd be looking for my body inside those flames by now,” he told him with just a hint of warning under all that fatigue and waited a long mean moment for a mental image to take place. When he heard Harry inhale sharply, he finally paid him a look. The young man was ashen pale and a sudden surge of love and bitter shame hit Ron straight in the stomach like a fist and he spoke quickly as if he wanted to apologize:

“I know it was a trying evening for all of us... just... let's not.... Oh, bloody hell, how about we meet for a pint after I tuck the kids in? Providing you buy me Firewhiskey, Potter, I'm beyond the help of Butterbeer tonight!”

It was just a “ _hmpf_!”, but Ron could tell Harry's attitude softened a little when he got a clear sign Ron was not going  to avoid him. Quickly, before anyone could object, he stretched his arm and softly caressed Harry's cheek.

“Later, Harry, please,” he said gently and saw the angry lines around his mouth smooth out a little. “I reckon in an hour or so; I'm willing to bet my best broom that the little scoundrels here would be out cold before the good night story runs out, they're all so exhausted from today's _adventure_ ,” he said pointedly and looked at Freddie sideways. The little one had a decency to blush and give a sheepish grin that made him look so much like Ron's dead brother Fred, that Ron couldn't really stay mad at him for any considerable length of time. This, here, was Fred's living clone and he had come too close to losing him tonight to care about anything else than taking his family to the safety of the familiar, wizarding reality. Scolding and disciplining can wait.

“Can I keep Hugo tonight, then?” Harry asked unexpectedly and he smiled straight into his favourite nephew's lit up eyes, deliberately ignoring how Ron's shoulders squared. “Freddie might want some undivided attention for once and we are just going to have a splendid time together, aren't we, Hugh... oups!” he was forced to intercept the weight of the reckless child as the little one practically jumped out of his dad's embrace and around his neck.

“P-etty p-eeeease,” the innocent blue eyes blinked at his big frowning dad – and Ron couldn't really say no. Though... he knew what this was. This was Harry's insurance policy, his way of making absolutely certain Ron would show up after all, if nothing else, to pick up his son. That was... _cunning_ and it was so out of Harry's character that it shocked Ron to get a glimpse of how far the raven-haired youth was willing to go to see Ron alone tonight. He should be worried, he knew; he should be looking for a way out – but, ultimately, this was his Harry and no, Ron wasn't worried, not really. Harry would never harm him, that much he knew. But Draco... right about now Harry looked fit to blast him to pieces and wear his skin like a trophy, there was something truly murderous inside those ice-green eyes.

He knew he needed to be careful, to tread with the caution and strategy he didn't even know he was capable of – but he had a debt to pay and pay it he would. Not only because he promised to the man that risked his life to bring him back his son, but also because he wanted to. He truly honestly did. And he was done thinking about the “ _why_ ”s and the “ _how the hell...?_ ”s. The second he held Draco Malfoy in his arms his body responded and his heart did – and now he needed to do something about it. To protect it and to show him, how much he cherished it. Possibly without breaking Harry's heart. Because, as Merlin was his witness – he loved Harry as well.

Losing Harry was not going to be an option. Like, ever. He'd only run away from the man if he threw bricks at him. Or not even. Harry was his wonderwall, something Ron measured his life against, someone he couldn't imagine being without because his world would simply lose everything that was good and right about it. It was just that – Draco was so much more. If Harry was Ron's temple, Draco was his sanctuary, where not only the good, but also the rest of the baggage Ron carried around could be laid down at his feet and the blond would take it for what it was.

While around Harry Ron would attempt to change what was bad about him, his terrible self-esteem, his insecurities, his greed to be more than what he was, simply because he was ashamed of it and wanted to give Harry the best of himself – there was no such effort necessary with Draco. The blond would just quietly take Ron's flaws for what they were and worked with them, or around them. The Slytherin made him feel loved and accepted on an entirely different level than Harry did. He could be completely himself around him, his imperfect, frustrated, aggressive self and he still made him feel good enough. No one's ever made Ron feel that way - and the feeling was heady.

But he couldn't have the reveries right now, he needed to keep his head about tonight. Harry was smart and alert and saw through bullshit from a mile away. Ron knew what was the real reason why he had yet to get caught red-handed: because Harry choose to ignore it. It must have been terrible for him to go against every instinct – and numerous evidence – pointing out that Ron was hiding something, but he did it anyway and that kind of a deliberate ignorance, just to keep him, broke Ron’s heart just a little. So he decided on a whim that it deserved a payment.

He pointedly ignored his impulse to keep Hugo at home, to spare himself from the inevitable confrontation that was to follow later in the evening and he simply nodded his agreement.

“Alright then, you two scoundrels. Hugo, be good, make sure Uncle Harry tucks you in good and proper and by no means let him get away with less than two bed-time stories! That's right, sweety, give us a kiss.... and one for mommy – and take care of yourselves. Harry, I'll see you later, yeah?”

In the moment when he was pulled closer to give Hugo a kiss he used the momentum and the opportunity and pressed a small, invisible but in every way enticing kiss just under Harry's earlobe and when he heard his breath hitch he knew he could still win this. As incomprehensible as it was, Harry loved him and he knew he loved Harry as well. He could do this. With some luck on his side, he could.

But he made a mistake. He very nearly did. He forgot about his astute wife.

Hermione was uncharacteristically quiet all the way home and Ron had simply assumed it was because she was still in shock over Freddie. She barely said a word all the time they were getting children ready for bed and she let Ron read them their bed-time story. And only when his hand was already on the door-knob, with a casually thrown “ _Going over to Harry's for a pint, yeah?_ ” across the shoulder, she spoke in a calm voice that Ron always found the most dangerous:

“Are you... having an affair with Draco Malfoy?”

For a moment there his mind went completely blank and he literally froze to the ground. And a second later he found himself under attack of a million different thoughts, swirling around his head like a swarm of agitated bees. How did she find out? Was it that obvious? Is she going to alert Harry of her suspicions? Because that's what they were until she had a proof, he told himself – _suspicions_ , nothing else. And what on Godric's blasphemous Earth was he supposed to tell her?!

His first instinct was to lie, to deny it all or call her crazy, perhaps attempt to evade her question as he would have done only days ago. Days, before he had realized what it was that tied him to Draco, before he had felt the grey eyes and soft blond hair and that vulnerable look of absolute devotion pull on his very heartstrings. But not anymore. Something inside of him rejected the idea of more lies so violently it shocked him and he could barely contain himself not to blurt out the blunt naked truth straight into her face. He needed more time, he needed to think things over, so he opted for stalling:

“Whatever gave you that idea?” he mumbled, but after the initial shocked look he paid her, he wouldn't look at her anymore; he was dead-set on staring at the door through which he was all set to depart moments ago and his mind was working a hundred miles an hour in the precious few seconds his question had bought him.

When she replied he could almost _hear_ the flash of anger in her eyes, because it was barely kept locked under the deceptive calm of her voice:

“Oh, I don't know,” she said lightly, trying too obviously not to sound sardonical. “Perhaps the very idea that he was willing to risk his life for the life of our son? I'm inclined to think it had more to do with you than it did with me, after all, he slipped into _your_ arms afterwards, as if he was quite comfortable there, as if it was somehow his right to find himself in there... And the way you held him – so... _practised_ , so possessive as if he's yours to have... perhaps the way he _clang_ onto you, as if you were his life-line and _definitely_ the way he looks at you - as if there's no one else around...

In short, Ron, a million different blasted things one would have to be blind not to see – so stop trying to manipulate me and just answer the damn question already: _Are you – or are you not – having a goddamn affair with Draco Malfoy!?_ ” she hissed in the end, her voice just a desperate livid crescendo.

And suddenly it didn't matter anymore – this here was his wife, the woman who knew him to the back of his head; the one person whose dishonest actions were partially responsible for all this terrible mess he's found himself in and she was just standing there, asking all these questions as if she still held any right to get the truthful answers and - fuck all – she shouldn't have asked if she really didn't want to know! 

“So what if I am?” he turned around and blurted out defiantly before the consequences of his rash actions fully settled in his mind. “What's it to you? You know how things stand between us, it's not like I wasn't honest with you!” he barked back and his eyes flashed like sapphires in brutal anger and frustration barely kept on the leash.

“I won't let you hurt Harry, you idiot!” she exploded and her words hit straight home. He paled instantly, but she was to furious to notice that she had already won: “He's my friend and yours as well, you'll do well to remember that, Ronald Weasley! If you're so dead-set on demonstrating how very little you care about hurting me – I won't let you break another person's heart, not one as priceless as Harry's! And for someone like Malfoy! Of all people!!! What the hell are you playing at, Ron?!”

“Not playing...” he said tiredly, suddenly desperate to curl up next to the warm body of that one person who had no expectations of him and who didn't judge. “I'm not playing, Hermione. It started out like that, but it's not like that anymore. Let's just say that I've been well and truly played.”

He finally looked her in the eye and the silent confession and unspoken regret in his clear blue eyes told her more than his words ever could and her hand flew to cover her mouth in a sudden jolt of shock:

“Merlin, Ron... “

And then in a unexpected violent outburst of uncontrollable emotion she added fiercely:

“I won't share you with anyone but Harry, do you hear me, Ron?! No one! _No bloody one person_ and _especially_ not Draco Malfoy! Harry.... I can handle. Merlin knows I've done you both wrong and he's my best friend and him... I can't take you away from him, I won't try. He deserves all the happiness he can find and if you're the one to give it to him – so be it. But Malfoy... _NO_. I'm still your wife, Ron, and I'm telling you I won't stand for that!”

“Would you care to change that, then?” he hissed out and he could hardly believe it himself when he heard his defiant thoughts echo out loud. If he was really out to hurt her, he would have gotten what he wanted with these words: she turned ashen pale.

 _“Wha -... What_?!” she stammered, but in a flash of instant relief that flooded him and felt so damn liberating, Ron couldn't be bothered to be tactful any longer.

“Just think it over,” he said quietly, but adamantly. “You're not the only one here sick of all the lies, Mione!” he added for good measure and looked her boldly in the face.

And the devastation in her eyes was clearly reflected in her voice when she spoke almost breathless:

“Are you telling me you'd ruin your life, our lives, over one Draco Malfoy!?”

The incredulity in her voice was so bloody irksome he could barely stop himself from erupting like he normally would whenever she made him feel inferior and childish. He took a big breath instead and replied pointedly, in the very voice _she_ used to lecture him about all things good and proper:

“What is there to ruin but a bunch of lies, Hermione?! _Think.It.Over,_ ” he repeated stubbornly. “You're supposed to be good at that. With the arrangement we have, you're the one getting hurt the most. You should have someone that loves and cares for you full-heartedly and I... I still love you, I still care... but you're no longer the only one for me. And you deserve that, Mione,” he said surprisingly gently. “Everybody deserves someone like that. The only thing keeping this together is the kids – I'll never ever let you take them away from me, I almost had a bloody cardiac today, coming so close to losing Freddie. As long as they're in the house, I'll never leave you, not of my own choice I won't. But if you can't come to terms with the way I want to live my life, the people I choose to spend it with, you're entitled to a decision of your own. Just... think carefully and let me know.”

With these words he turned around resolutely and walked through the door, leaving behind the devastation he could not imagine.

Hermione simply collapsed where she stood and stared behind him with numb dry eyes.

“But I only want you, Ron...” she finally whispered quietly. And at the same time she knew he was right: she could no longer play it like this. So she finally let the tears that welled-up in her eyes spill over, quietly, unabashedly, washing away her disappointment, her abandonment and lost love until she found enough strength to wipe them away resolutely and closed her eyes to focus. She had some serious soul-searching to do and she knew when the morning came she needed a decision.

~

“Finally, god dammit, Ron, finally, you bastard, what took you so long?!”

“Harry...” Ron tried, but it was already too late, because for all his smaller, though wiry built, Harry Potter was unstoppable when he wanted something. He had pushed Ron roughly against the wall and launched at his mouth as if his very life depended on the contact with beloved flesh. And Ron did, what he did best when he was with Harry: he gave in. He never learned how to say no to his best-mate and he reckoned he never would. And tonight he knew that Harry needed it more than ever.

He had picked him up at the Burrow, where Ginny was recovering, and watched him put Hugo to bed with a smile on his face, because the little greedy ginger had taken his dad's words well to heart and wouldn't let him go before three – not meagre two! - bedtime stories were perfectly delivered. And when Harry got up, his voice almost raw from all that talk, Ron approached casually and slipped down next to his son's bed to give him another goodnight kiss.

“I thought you would be sleeping by now,” he murmured gently and kissed his little carbon copy on the cheek. “But Uncle Harry is just too much fun, isn't he,” he added  with a smile shining through his voice and he knew Harry would see beyond his words. He meant to soften him tonight, soften the sharp edge of his suspicions good and proper, and he wasn't backing down from anything that worked.

“Sleep well, my shiny little knob,” he whispered into the already closing eyes of his youngest and got up from kneeling at Hugo's bed by casually slipping his fingers around Harry's hand as if he needed help getting up – and then he just kept them there. He could feel Harry's breath hitch as they stood by his son's bed, shoulders barely touching, holding hands, and as his thumb began to move in small circles to massage the inside of Harry's palm he could almost feel the wave of his desperate craving hit him.

He knew exactly how Harry felt, how badly he wanted this, wanted to prolong this make-believe that they were a proper family, just him, their kids and Ron, and at the same moment he wanted for nothing better himself. He needed to believe it tonight and when he held Harry's thin fingers safely cradled in the big palm of his hand, it was not exactly hard... He couldn't, just couldn't let those other thoughts bother him, couldn't afford to think of anyone else or Harry would smell it on him. There was going to be time for that tomorrow, he promised and he would live up to the words said into those big grey eyes, turned silver and full of stars for him.

But not tonight. Tonight was for Harry and he would give him exactly what he came here to give. Anything Harry wanted. Ron was always Harry's man and tonight would be no different. But not just yet.

The grip of their hands dissolved almost imperceptibly when the door opened and Ron's energetic mother motioned them silently to come out and once the door was closed, proceeded to scold them for disturbing the poor child's sleep. There was no way around interrogation on the would-be accident by the bonfire and by the time she was done with them Ron could feel Harry's restlessness and quickly fading patience nearly as a physical touch on the back of his neck. He knew him well, too well, and he knew the young man was wound up nearly to the point of breaking – and he really couldn't have that.

So when Harry finally excused himself and mumbled something about “ _assignments_ ”, throwing a strained, nearly pleading look at Ron on his way out, the redhead knew what to do. He made a short business of saying goodbye to his mother and threw in a promise of dropping by for the breakfast in the morning for good measure and was finally begrudgingly released.

He knew where to follow Harry, he always did, and the bond between them served only to make their connection deeper. So it was no surprise when he closed his eyes, thought “ _to Harry_ ” and found himself apparating right next to the nervously pacing young man.

“Finally, god dammit, Ron, finally, you bastard, what took you so long?!” were the only words Harry managed, before he took what was his and rather brutally at that. God, he thought he could never quench this terrible thirst burning through his body for Ron's warm reassuring presence; it was all too right and too little at the same time. He craved the very scent of his hot skin against him like a mad man, hopelessly starved of that magnificent body pressing into him, closing around him so perfectly, so completely, like his private, very own sanctuary, no matter how vulnerable and raw he sought him out. And he was addicted to his physical touch, there was no denying it; right now god himself and a fucking army of angels on top of that could not stop him from falling to pieces under those soft generous lips; not when they were feeding so eagerly at his love-thirsty mouth, not while that dangerous slick tongue invaded him and reduced him to whimpers with such ease....

Merlin, when their tongues touched and began that crazy hungry game of seduction and sweet revenge, he sort of fell off the edge of the world and never wanted to come back. Ron's mouth was melting him down to bits of raw craving, madly intoxicating in its wet hot surrender, sucking him forever deeper into the very pits of private hell until Harry was drowning and struggling to breathe between his obsession and his devastating need. Oh, yeah.... _this_... he needed this... he was addicted to this... to his red-headed demon kissing the life out of him as if there was no tomorrow, no reality to go to. This man of his could kiss every last atom of strength -, every last bit of defiance out of him and Harry never knew how they went from kissing fully clad at the door to writhing naked against each other by the majestic old fireplace, their frantic desperate moans and pleading mixing into an unforgettable, perfect symphony.

Ron must have apparated them straight into the master bedroom of no. 12 Grimmauld place, his frequent place of choice for their love-making, but Harry never felt a thing, it was all just like a blink of an eye when he was lost inside the devil's cave of Ron's mouth. The next thing he knew his body was pressed down into the softness of the polar bear fur rather violently and he whimpered with no shame and reservation: he just loved it when Ron took control like that. He wanted to, no, _needed_ to know his desperate ache was mirrored inside his blue-eyed god and in moments like that nothing could give him that guarantee quite like the hard hot cock pressing against his naked skin, rubbing against his own leaking shaft as if begging for attention and Ron hissing needy filth mixed with stuttered pleading into his ear.

“Need... need... need to fuck you.... hard... tonight, Potter....” he whispered heated broken words as his teeth pulled with little mercy at Harry's nipples and the raven-haired youth could only yelp because this pain-gone-pleasure was a special addiction of his. He knew Ron could gnaw at his nubs and spoil them with his cruel decadent tongue until he all but begged him for release, but it didn't seem as if he was up to that kind of play tonight.

“Need to sink into you, pay a visit to that special aching spot inside of you that makes you scream, you beautiful slut, need to own you, Potter, my pretty little cock-whore,” the redhead whispered hotly with that gorgeous generous mouth travelling down Harry's body, kissing him into bruises and licking him into pleading moans until Harry was nothing but a wanting, needing, begging mess, desperate to come, to blow his mounting hurtful load, to find himself again in the monstrous release building up like a chained-dragon's roaring breath just under the edge of his cock.

Only Ron could do this to him, only he knew him well enough to bring him to the brink of madness and serve his deep depraved needs with his dirty mouth and commanding cock. Harry's legs were spread brutally as the red head disappeared down his body and though Harry knew that his fiery lover would never really hurt him, the illusion was real enough and it was welcome: he liked toying with the edge of pain, he liked it when Ron kept pushing it further and further and nothing made him come like hard, vicious invasion, the sight of his beloved redhead, wild-eyed and lost in lust, riding him with vile abandon, spitting out filth and scattered words of love as he got ready to deliver his load, deep, so deep inside of him that Harry felt as if he was going to split if he ever let go.

He cried out loud when the rough fingers spread his arse-cheeks and he felt a breath of a whispered charm ghost around his puckered hole. He could feel it pulsating in anticipation, he's been begging for it to be filled every since the silken mouth touched the inside of his thighs and he heard a whispered command: “Spread them for me, Potter, I wanna see what I'm getting...”

His biggest fear right now was that he was going to come before he got filled up to the brink and it was a very real danger when Ron slowly sucked first one and then the other one of his balls into his large wet mouth and let his tongue roll them around lazily until they were drawing up and about to explode. The only thing that still separated him from flooding his stomach with shots of come was his own broken whimpering, begging for a different kind of release:

“Ron, no... now... baby... please... you know what I need... inside... please, oh, _ChristandMerlin_... godfuckingdamnyou, you fucking tease, you know just where I want you....”

Harry could feel him smile like a mean, gleeful spoilt cat, straight into the centre of his tenderness and then that giant tease of a tongue licked him once, just once, travelling slowly from the bottom of his root to the very top to collect the pearly drops of pre-come with a lapping tongue and when the pained yelp Harry gave announced that he could no longer restrain himself, the vicious hand squeezed at the bottom of his cock just hard enough to stop him from coming.

“Not yet, Potter....” he murmured in a deep dangerous voice that gave Harry the shivers. “You don't get to come just yet... not before I got you where I want you.”

His large hand still carefully placed around the girth of Harry's cock the redhead looked his lover straight into the hazy green eyes and let his wet tongue slowly outline the shape of his generous lips until they were glistening in the feeble night light and spoke in his low determinate voice:

“I'm gonna lick your hole clean now, Potter... all shiny, wet, and soft for me... until you're ready, my love... ready to let me in... let me spoil you, my little love-slut, I'd like nothing better...”

And Harry's loud yelp echoed from every high ceiling in the house when the redhead buried his pretty face right between his legs, bending him impossibly and stretching him brutally in any way necessary to gain access and throw Harry into the wilderness that was sex with Ron Weasley. He was only half aware of his incoherent blabbing and right keening when the large mouth served his pulsating begging hole, the smart tongue sweeping at it with abandon, finding its way in and then cruelly sliding out again, licking the places Harry didn't even know could ache with a need for release and when his redheaded sex god finally lifted up his head from between his legs just to look him in the face, the image of those blue eyes alive with brilliance and the breathless smile playing on the swollen lips, spelling out “ _for you, my love_ ”, were Harry's undoing.

“Ron... now...” he managed a sole broken sound as the hard hot cock finally crashed into his slick craving channel and invaded him in one vile motion, finally, _godfuckinggod,_ finally filling him up impossibly and pushing him outside of his body. Ron fucked him through his howling trashing release, fucked him hard and with no mercy until it felt as if he fucked all the pain Harry ever felt out into the Universe and nothing was left but absolute completion. _There_... there he was... this is where Harry existed, this is where he found himself, with Ron's cock buried so deep inside him he could not imagine existing without, with redhead's wet mouth panting hot breathless desire into his ear and whimpering his release into his very skin, cursing him, worshipping him, making him feel loved and one and only.

Harry loved him, no one but him. In those moments he didn't care about his own doubts and suspicions and ice cold jealousy burning a hole into his very being whenever he was away from him. Now, here, Ron - that was all he needed. It wasn't too much to ask the Universe, was it? Of course... it couldn't last.

After a long last Ron moved on top of him, tiredly and with a growl; slipped out of him and rolled off him and the coat of cold abandonment that instantly covered Harry from head to toe would have been too much to bear if the slick hard body didn't roll right back at his side and that god-given Ron-scent alone was enough to make Harry's face dissolve into a tired smile. The strong muscled arm and the wonderfully heavy leg was casually thrown across him as the sweaty face with a mess of silken hair pressed straight into the side of his neck and the redhead murmured sleepily:

“Give us a kiss, Potter... I didn't go through all this trouble to fall asleep without.”

And Harry had no reservations about humoring him. He wouldn't have, if he could actually turn his head, but he was too fucking destroyed to do anything other than just let it fall to the side and let Ron take his helping of soft lips eager to be kissed and taste the juices of his own body.

“I love you,” Harry told him weakly, because this was all he could manage, but it needed to be said, he needed to let him know.

“I know, beautiful,” a sleepy voice mumbled into his ear and another enticing tired kiss was pressed into the soft spot underneath it. “Why do you think I'm here? I needed to hear you say it, after tonight I did. But not now... can't now. 'm too tired. We'll talk in the morning, I'll stay the night, yeah?”

And though this was not the answer Harry was looking for, it was such an unexpected grace, he did not dare poke at the Universe with a million questions and doubts he had. He simply closed his eyes, allowed himself a few blissfully happy moments of revelling in the presence of that beloved warm body wrapped around him with that incredible scent of sex and intimacy that might as well spell “I-own-you-now-love-Ron” - and fell asleep with a smile on his face before dark thoughts could take over. That, too, was another speciality of Ron's, ever since they were kids together. He could lull him to sleep with his presence alone and keep all the bad things at bay just by being there and making Harry feel safe and treasured.  

And when he woke up the next morning, the grey of approaching dawn merely crawling like a shrouded lady across the vast rooms of no. 12 Grimmauld place, he found himself already staring into the deep blue eyes of the man who held his heart captive.

“Morning,” said Ron in a quiet gentle voice, as if he was still afraid to wake him up completely – and Harry's breath hitched when he saw the uncommonly calm and serious look in those softly-shining orbs. He knew before the redhead spoke, that this was it; this was his opportunity, perhaps the only one, to get his sorely desired answers. Only...

“Ask away,” said Ron calmly. “I'll answer whatever I could.”

But Harry had just realized he wasn't ready.

All the long torturous moments of feeling lost and angry and cold at the very thought that he might be sharing his beautiful redhead with another -, all the nights spent awake in scorching jealousy at the thought where could he be now and who could he be with -, all the desperate need to know, to finally get his answers, true answers, straight answers, not evasions if not flat-out lies – it all paled in comparison with a sudden debilitating fear that he might lose him. If there was truth waiting for him on the other side of Ron's words and that truth meant Ron could no longer belong to him – Harry didn't want to risk it and he didn't want to know.

He could not imagine a reality without Ron by his side, he could not imagine losing him for whatever reason; to death, to life, to someone else. When it came to that – nothing else mattered. If _not knowing_ was the price he was going to pay, it was the price he was _willing_ to pay.

“Ask away,” Ron repeated calmly, looking composed, almost resigned to his Fate and incredibly alluring in his serene beauty - and Harry knew he was ever only going to ask him the important questions.

“Do you love me, Ron?” he asked quietly and for some reason his heart was beating in his throat so wildly he was almost dizzy from tense anticipation. Everything depended on those next few answers he was going to get.

He saw a flicker of confusion in those captivating sea-blue eyes, as this was clearly not the question the redhead expected – but he answered it immediately as if he recognized it wouldn't do to torture his lover further:

“Yes.”

His voice was warm, firm and so certain that a thousand decorated sentences with words of passion and belonging couldn't have given Harry more assurance as this one-syllable word did. His head suddenly felt light with relief and all the impossible options this single word opened before him and – gods, yes, it was a yes! _Yes_. He loved him. And he looked into his eyes when he had said it and it was no lie, Harry could tell, and his heart suddenly felt as if it sported a new gash, bleeding pure love. Ron loved him.

And on he went to next question, another, equally scary, equally important question that was going to determine and re-define the boundaries of their relationship:

“Would you ever leave me?”

And the answer came just as fast as it did before, as if this was something the redhead had thought about and found the answer to eons ago:

“No. Never. Not you. You're everything that's good about my life, you're my Harry.  I'm hand-fasted to you by my own choice and I'd never leave you behind. Yours, always,” he said simply and looked at Harry with devotion that needed no other words, could wish for no further explanation. “That's what my ring says, Harry. I never take it off. But...”

“No,” said Harry Potter quickly and covered his lover's mouth before that other truth he didn't want, the truth he didn't need, slipped out in the open.

“Don't say it. Don't, Ron. I'll never... I won't ask you and you must never tell. I could not bear knowing, but I can bear _not_ knowing. If that's the price of not losing you, then I can. I don't want to know. Not anymore. Keep your... other truth. You gave me what I came here to get. I shan't ask the gods for anything more.”

And Ron suddenly hugged him fiercely, pulled him into his embrace unexpectedly and sheltered him there and Harry never saw the tears that welled up in his blue eyes.

“For all the love I have for... others,” the redhead told him in a strangely wild, shaky voice, “I love you no less, Harry.”

And it was all Harry wanted. Nothing else mattered.

They had made love once more; _“just a little longer”_ , thought Harry, and _“fuck all, he needs me”_ , thought Ron and he resolved to make it special. He worked him, every bit of him, slowly, thoroughly, the way he knew it was driving him mad with yearning lust and when it was time, when the desperate tortured green-eyed slave of his begged for it, he whispered in his ear with hot wet breath:

“I want to be the one this time, Harry... I want you inside... want you to fill me up... make me belong, precious... make me yours, Harry, my Harry...”

And Harry Potter, the boy who lived to be a man madly in love with his best friend, barely kept it together as the soft seductive words reached him: they had never done it like this before. At first, Harry didn't want to; too desperate to show Ron he could be in charge for once, make him see how very much ready he was to give into him - and later, Harry had already become too addicted to the hard cock dominating him from inside to ever even consider anything else. And now Ron was giving him a chance; a chance and opportunity to mark him for his own, to claim him, to sink inside him... The very thought almost made his swollen cock burst.

“You sure?” he asked breathless, his fingers already down there, already touching and caressing and stretching and doing fuck-all to make this happen because suddenly he could no longer imagine how could he have gone without for so long.

And Ron just smiled into his eyes, the way he only knew how, the way that could stop Harry's breath and fill his cock from 10-feet-away, the way it made absolutely clear who was really in control - and kissed him lightly.

“Get inside me, Potter, I wanna see what the whole fuss is all about,” he murmured into a kiss a split moment before when Harry's fingers gave room to his needy leaking cock and then...

“Fuck... gods, Harry.... fuck...”

“Sshhh, my love, just... give it a moment... Merlin, you're tight, I can't stop now, I can't... _ohmyfuckinggod_ , you feel so bloody incredible, Ron... just... relax, baby, and let me... _there_... oh, holy fuck, Ron... so beautiful... yesssss, like this... gods, you're gorgeous like this... let me make it good for you... make it unforgettable... the way you make it for me... make me fall apart... let me take you apart, Ron... this once... can't hold back any longer... can't... Ron... !!!”

The way the beautiful debauched body of his redheaded god stretched underneath him and the tight channel tensed around him in the last desperate spasm; the way his eyes rolled-back in his head as he came to meet him in a violent eruption with a pained shout worshipping his name - Harry lost it. Just lost it. Unaware of his body still pounding inside his beloved redhead, riding him through his numbing, mind-blowing climax, stuttering his name and a million little nothings - he was dead to the world, transported into some other reality filled with starlight where he was one with his love and which he never wanted to leave behind. If only he could stay... die like this, because nothing should ever be allowed to follow such perfection. 

The descent from his bliss into reality was painful, the way it always was, but never more so. He bit his lip not to whimper in pain, almost physically aware of his loss, his eviction from Paradise, but only when he felt the large warm hands pull him down and gently slide down his back, caressing him all the while, did he feel up to sinking down into real world. After all – it had Ron in it, how bad could it be? And then he felt his warm wet breath caress his ear _“oh, holy fucking fuck, Harry... Merlin, this was something...you're something...”_ and he even managed to smile and instantly felt a bit better, perhaps even a little smug.

“Potter... you can deliver... no wonder they call you Saviour... Sir,” Ron murmured gently, enticingly, into his ear and as dead tired as Harry felt he felt his loins stir violently. Bloody hell, was there no end to a spell Ron had over him?! He thought he left everything he had inside of him, he felt empty, hurt, he'd never come so hard in his life – and yet one word from his beloved redhead messed with his head and got his cock twitching. God, was he fucked. He knew this obsession with sex wasn't healthy, he knew it, but he couldn't help himself – Ron just knew all his triggers, secret magical words that set Harry off like a spring and made him crave more.

“Shut up...” he mumbled, to make it go away, cause he was certain he could no longer move to do any of his crazy body's bidding. “How am I supposed to go and teach now, is what I'd like to know... I'm so bloody unravelled I can't remember my own damn name!”

“Oh, I'm sure someone can help you with that... The word in the Hogwarts' corridors is that you were quite famous... Professor.”

“Ron...” hissed the raven-haired youth, cause this was... it was just the worst, but he couldn't stay mad at him for long when he saw a large naughty grin light up the pretty freckled face he's been in love with since they were kids and the redhead rubbed their noses together as if he never really grew up.

“I'm one lucky student...” he whispered and stole one last kiss. “For the road,” he murmured and Harry knew that their fairy-tale was ended for the day and his heart slowly grew heavy. He watched him stretch like a big ginger cat and tried to tell himself that it didn't matter, that he was too tired to do something about this crazy obsession turning his insides to liquid as he watched Ron get dressed.

“I can't see you tonight,” he told him with regret and just a hint of bitterness in his voice. “I promised Ginny I would spend an evening with her after I left with you last night – and then it's my turn to baby-sit Jamie, she hasn't been out with friends in a month, so I couldn't say no...”

But Ron just turned around and put a finger on his mouth as if he wanted to stop an uncalled for apology. He didn't have the heart to tell him he knew – that's why he made his plans regarding a certain blond the way he did.

“Don't, Harry,” he told him gently. “I'm not going anywhere, remember? We'll see each other soon enough – damn, man, if you give me another night like this one, we might as well set it up at St. Mungo's!”

“Bloody hell... sorry, mate, I didn't even ask, I didn't think... are you hurt? Shit, I'm such a self-absorbed prick, I should have...”

“Oy! Don't give yourself a cardiac here, Potter! I'm not exactly fragile, you know, I survived Fred and George as a wee child and I married Hermione, the bloody scariest witch on the planet! I'll live through, uhm... certain sore spots... No... I just meant... you kind of fucked me stupid there, so... I suppose I could use a few days' rest,” Ron admitted with the most adorable sheepish grin and Harry couldn't stop his face from mirroring it, suddenly feeling as smug as they came.

“When, then? When are you coming to see me again?” he blurted out, his body suddenly flushed with a sensory memory and desperate to repeat the experience. But Ron leaned over him, once again over-powering the way only he knew how and looked him straight in the face with narrowed-eyes:

“Impatient much... Professor?”

“Ron... “

All smugness gone, Harry positively moaned his name in sweet torture, but the redhead merely captured his mouth with his own soft insatiable lips and wouldn't let  a simple goodbye kiss go until he almost felt Harry melting into a puddle underneath him.

“Third evening from now,” he finally whispered into his mouth. “Have your time with your wife, make bonds with your son and then meet me here. I'll be waiting.”

“Ron...” Harry tried to get his scrambled brain together enough for at least a proper goodbye, but Ron was already gone and there was nothing left for Harry but the taste of the last bitter-sweet kiss on his mouth. It was enough to take him through the day.

~

Oh, blasted Merlin, she was still here.... He was hoping for some time to himself, perhaps to skip school for once to think all his fucked-up complex life over and find some direction, but, of course, this was _his_ life, when did he ever get what he wanted in a straightforward way?! Oh, holy fuck... He couldn't deal with her nagging, not this once – but perhaps he wouldn't have to...

What was she doing home so late, was beyond Ron, but he only had to look at her once to know that something had changed. Late for work, as she never was, Hermione Granger sat in the same comfortable chair he had left her in the night before. But the air in the room was completely different. And then he noticed the expression on her face and his breath hitched: he knew that look. She had reached a decision, an irreversible one, he guessed, as was always the case when Hermione Granger was concerned.

He forced himself to mutter a greeting, but she had not greeted him back, she merely observed him with astute dry eyes, only the redness of them still betraying that she had a rough night behind her.

“One bottomless pint that must have been...” she finally commented, but her voice, though spiked with a hint of sarcasm, was without malice, as if she had simply come to accept that her rage no longer had any affect on him.

“Got... delayed,” he mumbled, strangely embarrassed in front of her and added quickly to redirect her attention from the delicate subject: “Aren't you supposed to be at work? I've never known you to be this late!”

“I called in sick,” she explained calmly. “I couldn't bring myself to tell them that I was unfit to work because I had spent an entire night waiting for my cheating husband to return so we can work things out,” she added almost as if on a second thought, sounding so impassive that he knew, he just sensed, how very hurt she was under the cold act. He, too, had known her for too long to be fooled by her.

So he didn't bother keeping up the pretence any longer. He quietly walked to her chair and sat on the floor by her feet, looking up at her and deliberately putting her in a position of power:

“Say what you've got to say, Mione, I'm listening,” he said simply, knowing that she would be able to appreciate the gesture of peace she was given.

“You were right,” she finally spoke at long last, her voice calm, but unable to hide the tiniest hint of bitterness. “I deserve better. I deserve better, Ron, than to wait for my husband the whole bloody night to be granted a few moments alone to say what  needs to be said. I'm done with it. I refuse to get punished for the rest of my life for loving you, Ron, and taking advantage of you, as I admit I regrettably did. I'm ashamed of my past actions, I always was, but a lot of good had come out of it as well and I refuse to be taken hostage by my own heart. It certainly doesn't justify you neglecting me, ignoring me, using me when you see fit – this ends today, Ron.”

She looked him straight in the eye and he felt his cheeks flush with shame: this here was his wife, the woman he had married and who had given him a priceless gift of making him a father to three lovely children; his best friend, second only to his Harry, since he was 11; the only girl that ever made any sense to him and the only female outside of his family he could bring himself to feel anything for; his Mione who only ever wanted the best for him and worked tirelessly to make him a better man – and this was wrong. He had been treating her wrong and the punishment he had delivered was way too harsh for a woman that only ever wanted to love him. He was acting like a spoilt child holding a grudge these last few months and finally he was ready to acknowledge it.

“I'm sorry,” he said simply, because he never grew up to be a man of elaborate words. “I'm sorry, Mione. You're right. About everything. I was a right proper git and I shouldn't have been – not after all you've done for me. Perhaps I can't give you the love you need to have and deserve to get, but I should have at least given you respect for the good life we had together. You were my friend before you were my wife and you only ever wanted the best for me – including yourself,” he smiled a small smile and he knew she appreciated the compliment when she fumbled a little and her cheeks flushed.

“Shush, you tireless flatterer!” she mumbled, but he knew she didn't really mind – she could read right through his crude words and she knew she had gotten her point across to him – and that was what really mattered.

“Anyway... as I was saying...” she was trying to collect herself under the close proximity of those blue eyes that she could never grow indifferent to. “As I was saying, before you flattered me numb, Ronald,” she finally managed pointedly, “is that I'm willing to let you go. I should very much like us to come to some sort of amiable conclusion of our ill-fated marriage, because I have no intention whatsoever to subjugate our kids to the results of their parents' folly. You see, I was thinking - if you agree, of course - that I will continue to be a part of this family until you've done your NEWTs and found yourself an appropriate position in the professional world – and then perhaps, we can terminate our arrangement on friendly terms and move on...”

She looked at him expectantly and he immediately knew how much it had meant to her to have bought herself a bit of a delay, to have thought of it rationally and finally structured this chaos of their failing marriage into a executable plan she could follow – she had always found her comfort in the rational things she could control. So he merely nodded his acquiescence and murmured encouragingly:

“Sounds like a reasonable plan so far. But what about...”

“Children will not be a problem,” she cut him short. “We will have to finalize the housing details later, but in the end they will always have their home with one of us, both of us. They hardly ever see me as it is,” she pressed her mouth together bitterly, well-aware that the long hours she had pulled off as a sole family provider never bothered her before, when she left her home certain that her kids were properly cared for by their loving dad.

“And ever since you've started school they've been practically living with your mother and things aren't likely to improve once you started a proper job,” she reminded him. “Molly had expressed her... interest in “ _taking care of the her little sunshines good and proper_ ” to me on several occasions in no uncertain terms,” said Hermione, carefully omitting how very guilty the proposal had left her. “Besides – I don't see what other options we have, other than a Muggle care-centre which would be a bit more complicated – not to mention expensive,” she mentioned matter of factly and when he paid her a terrified look she knew she had made a good point.

“I reckon my mom can do good by them...” he said thoughtfully and in a short pause that ensued as if the last of their common issues had been finally settled between them, he was unexpectedly hit by the recognition that this was it; that there was to be no more of _them_ , that this will be the first time he'd ever part ways with her, his best friend for over a decade, his brave, beautiful, smart wife – and that his life would be losing one of its cornerstones. With no prior warning, acting completely on an impulse as only he knew how, he pulled her into his embrace and felt her heartbeat pick up speed near his chest.

“Oh, Hermione...” he whispered, suddenly feeling lost and disoriented in this new reality. “I never... I never would have thought we'd come this far... that I'd have to let you go... This damn life, honestly.... it just breaks more ties than death does, doesn't it? Please don't think too badly of me, I know I fucked things up and you should know I'll  miss you terribly... Can you still be my friend, Mione?”

He looked at her with those soft blue eyes glistening with unshed tears and she was painfully reminded that she'd sold her soul for them once and knew she would have done it all over again. Over and over. No regrets. A few years of happiness with him were worth it.

He misunderstood her silence for hesitance and hurt crawled even deeper in that sea of the deepest blue she fell in love with at 11. How could he think she'd deny him anything? But her silly, loving Ron was just as short of self-confidence as he was all those years back. He couldn't recognise a battle already won and that insecurity of his was just as much part of his charm as the beloved blue glow she's going to have to learn how to live without.

“Can you forgive me after all I've done? Pushed you away, treated you so poorly... when you deserved none of it and I've done far things for love myself... Can you forgive me, Mione?” he asked quietly and she could see from his pretty face that he truly, genuinely cared – and somehow that had made their break-up all worse. But the next question left her really ruffled:

“Can you... be there... for me? Not only for the kids, cause I know you will be this absolutely smashing mom, but for me... For those times when I blunder beyond repair and only you and you alone can throw me a life-line like you always do? Can you, Mione? I'd like that, I'd like that very much, you're the only woman...”

“Shhh,” she told him, even put a finger on his soft mouth that will never again belong to her, because she couldn't... she just couldn't take any more of his honesty , his hopeless desperate attempt to make things right between them again when she knew in her heart that she could never leave him completely behind. Perhaps not in a name, but he would always be her Ron, they would always have their years together, their children, their quiet unspoken understanding that they cared for each other deeply.

“I'd never leave you behind, silly...” she told him gently, sincerely, and felt her own eyes fill up with tears. “You don't even have to ask. I loved you before you ever noticed I had girly bits, you prat, and I've done stupid, unforgivable things to be with you that landed us here... or maybe we would have landed here anyway,” she said thoughtfully, for as rational as she was, the prophecy on Harry's life thought her a harsh lesson on someone's life being forfeit.

“But my point is – you're the father of my children and if you won't believe anything else, believe that I'd never deliberately jeopardize  their well-being. Having a happy father is well within my field of interest,” she mirrored his sudden, relieved smile and touched his face reassuringly, realizing immediately what a terrible mistake this was if she was to learn how to live without him. Those brilliant blue irises, so close to her face, the beautiful, familiar constellation of freckles on his face – she needed to get away from him, get away soon or his warm intoxicating presence alone would sink her resolve to end this.

“But you need to promise me something in return as well,” she said quickly and tried to collect her quickly scattering wits about. “Promise you won't make Harry unhappy.”

He froze in her arms, just like she hoped he would but it still made her ache a little, and he had slowly, almost unperceptively moved away from her, going for a bit of distance the delicate request required.

“This Malfoy business...” she started, but he cut through her train of thought with a quiet determined voice:

“Harry doesn't want to know, Hermione.”

The expression on her face must have turned completely incredulous, because he sighed shallowly, but then elaborated in quiet, focused voice:

“I offered and he doesn't want to. I got so sick and tired of all the lies surrounding me, having to put on a million and one pretence, that I just didn't care anymore. I was willing to spill it and I would have, had he wanted me to. I told him to ask away, anything, but he only ever asked me the stuff he already knew... he should have known: if I loved him, if I was ever going to leave him. Which, of course, it is entirely bizarre, because I've loved him since I could spell the word and I would never, ever want to live in a world without him, I wouldn't know how. It's just that...”

”Oh, Ron...” she sighed quietly and she immediately knew what this was all about. His next words weren't even necessary:

“He told me he didn't want to lose me,” he said quietly. “Told me he could live with not knowing and if that's the price he was going to have to pay to keep me, he was willing to do so. And he sounded so miserable saying that and he held me so tight... dammit, Hermione, why did I have to go and fuck this whole thing up! Fucking stupid, fucking greedy...”

“Perhaps it is not too late yet,” she cut through his self-slandering. “Why don't you just let Draco Malfoy slide, tell him, you're not interested, surely what you have with Harry is more important?” she looked at him suggestively... and was shocked when she saw him shake his head immediately, no doubt in his rejection of such an idea.

“Can't,” he said curtly. “Far too late for that. You see,” he looked at her with his big  blue eyes, sparkling with emotion she knew fart too well, “I love him, too. No doubt about that. He got me and he got me good and proper. Love him to bits. No way back from that, not for me," he smiled almost sadly and his fingers sunk into his glossy red hair as if he was trying to make order of his thoughts: "And fuck me if I know what to do about it.”

And his distress was so obvious, she put her arms around him to hold him together and then he told her. He told her everything, from that first innocent kiss almost a decade ago, to the way Draco sought him out and how foolishly, violently and irreversibly he responded to him, almost as if they were destined for each other, how much the blond came to need him, how pulled into it he himself had become, how impossible it became for him to let go. 

And for once, Hermione Granger was at loss for words and ideas. Ron was on his own this time.


	44. ... to chase the tender dreams of shadow...

_When the night has passed_

_And my life is mine again_

_I shall want no more_

_To see the sun._

_For you'll be the night_

_That keeps me warm_

_Makes me wanna be_

_Even after I am gone._

 

He was already there, filling the cosy armchair in the corner of the room with his tall muscled frame, his long legs planted apart like those of a king on a throne and in his majestic pagan beauty he was the most gorgeous, scariest thing Draco had ever seen. And he had foolishly kept him waiting... His legs moved out of his own accord and he approached him slowly, almost in reverence, like a believer would his god and couldn't take his eyes off him, suddenly all too aware of how badly he was trembling.

~

 _“_ _See you tomorrow... at school.”_

Draco had opened his grey eyes abruptly, the voice still so fresh in his head that it took him a while to figure out that there was no way he could catch a glimpse of the fiery hair and the long, sex-charged look of those alluring blue eyes. It was only a dream, but one so vivid, the blond found his breathing accelerated and his cock hard.

“Bugger,” he muttered half disappointed, half frustrated and closed his eyes to escape the reality for a few short moments he needed to get rid of the undesirable tension. It only took half a dozen of wanton strokes and a memory of that god-sexy lopsided smile that had the power to melt his insides - and his body tensed as he flooded his fist and his sheets with the warm liquid and his head with the sweet, almost unbelievable memory. He still couldn't believe it that Ron had looked at him _that way_ in front of Potter, with a hard promise and complete abandon and all that sex just _oozing_ from those commanding blue eyes and tense muscled body...

Merlin, he should really stop thinking about that or he was never getting up, he could feel his stupid lust-addled loins stirring yet again. That goddamn blasted Weasley incubus, was there no way to release the spell the redheaded devil held over him?! He could barely function like this, obsessing the way he did; his thoughts, _all_ of his thoughts stubbornly flying in his direction as if he was not allowed to have one that didn't lead him back to Ron. He thought about getting up, but that had only lead him to a memory how mercilessly Ron pulled him back into the sheets, murmuring menacingly “ _Who said you could leave? I'm nowhere near done with you, snake!_ ” and god, did he need to banish these thoughts! Now, right now was... too late, his cock at half-mast informed him with regret.

He could hear his stomach growl, but the first thought of food came with a memory of the redheaded devil feeding him bits of toast with jam, of the intoxicating post-sex smell of his body and the warmth of his proximity and of everything that followed and he just groaned and pressed the palms of his hands deeply into the eye-sockets as if that was somehow going to stop him from indulging in the mental pictures he had been missing so much. He couldn't do this anymore, he would drive himself up the fucking wall if he didn't get up now, _right fucking now_ , and started following the usual course of his day, simply trying not to think, just... not to think, not to remember. He missed Ron terribly and there was a million and one sense memory that reminded him of the elusive, bewitching redhead and the incredible, unforgettable moments they shared between themselves.

And then there was this evening.

Just the thought of it, of the meeting in front of him for which he had asked himself and which he dreaded and expected with a jittering heart, had his heart pumping like a drum and he was happy he was still lying down. _Shit, shit, shit,_ his alarmed brain screamed at him as he dug his long bony fingers into the silver-blond hair and tried to stop his head from exploding in panic. What was he thinking!? Or more importantly, _why wasn't_ he thinking! He should have gotten up at dawn and started scheming, planning, outlining the speech and the arguments he was going to give the redhead to persuade him – possibly - that this, _them_ , was a good idea, in any shape of form, however minuscule.

It was just... he felt so goddamn tired last night, didn't he?! Right drained he was from all the emotional turmoil of seeing him there and getting his god-given opportunity to change his mind he could not afford to gamble away – and then there was a small issue of confessing to his mother, which was just the scariest and oh, bloody hell, right now he didn't know which way was up or down, he was hardly up to conceiving... something, anything, any sort of inspiring words that would be able to change Ron's opinion about what a lousy idea this was! And when, if you please, had that done him any good in the past?!

He'd been here before, at least once before, at the very spot where he was supposed to find words and ways to persuade the redhead to keep him around and about. And what had he done? After a whole long day of planning he had blurted out the stupidest, most arrogant thing his Malfoyian brain had come up with - and Ron had stayed anyway... _because he wanted to_ , Draco knew. And that thought made him smile. Could he make him so reckless again? Could he play the undeniable pull between them for all it was worth and make him keep what little they had? It was, in the end, so very little, only a few hours a week, passing as quickly as a shooting star, while the remaining hours, days dragged like a chilly depressing winter fog.

Draco lived for those hours, he came to life under the touch of the long warm fingers, his heart almost burst open when he stared up into the blue skies of Ron Weasley's eyes, flooded with all that love and passion there for him and he couldn't take his life being so grey and purposeless without at least a ray of hope. Just a few hours every week, he could live off that, he could give his father and mother what they wanted so badly, if only he could have that. But there was nothing he could do.

If Ron was up to it, if somewhere inside those intricate corridors of the redhead's brain there was a way found, if there was a tiny bit of place left in his heart, then Draco would get his chance. If not...

And that was the thought that finally drove him out of bed. He couldn't handle it; he couldn't let the depressive weight of it settle over his chest. He dove straight into the morning routine he had and tried to think of anything else but the day ahead. And as if the gleeful gods have been dead-set on playing with him, he got his distraction sooner than he anticipated.

As soon as he entered the breakfast parlour he was met by an uncommonly pleased looking father and, really, the sight was scary in its own right. The man was positively grinning, which was something that almost made Draco take a step backwards, because it was just such an uncommon sight. He had certainly never seen him grin – smirk, yes, father was probably born with one such semi-malicious expression on his face – but a full on smile that made his father look all the more predatory... Suddenly it hit him what this was and his heart sunk. He paid his mother a grim, reproachful look across the room, but she merely arched her perfect eyebrow and he knew he was doomed.

He was not stupid, he knew what he agreed to last night to protect Ron, he was only hoping it could be... delayed a little, perhaps pushed back just a day or two so he could sleep it over and get used to the idea. But it was not to be. Apparently his sharp-as-a-diamond mother wanted to see if he was willing to live up to his part of the deal before he visited Ron Weasley tonight – and letting her down really wasn't an option. Ron's safety was too important and if she was genuinely willing to help, her assistance would be invaluable.

“Good morning to you, son!” Lucius all but boomed across the breakfast parlour and pointed towards the empty chair between him and his wife. “And what a splendid morning it is! Pray, do take your seat, boy! Finally came to claim your spot at the family table, did you? And – a proper one in your life as well, or so I hear... “ He paid a meaningful look to his wife, but Narcissa merely smiled politely, her ice-blue eyes fixed on her pale son's face and the hint of anxiety in them could barely be masked.

“Well... yes,” said Draco almost hoarsely and cleared his throat to gain some time. “Mother and I have been engaged in a rather... _eye-opening_ , shall we say, conversation last night and she painted me quite an... illustrious picture as to why I should – how to put it? - be more... concerned with continuation of the family line and take my responsibilities as a member of this family more seriously.”

“And about bloody time, too!” bellowed his father, but there must have been some quiet apprehension going on under the long table-cloth between him and his stone-faced wife, because he winced almost imperceptibly and coughed to mask the awkward moment:

“That is to say... splendid, my boy, simply marvellous. Your mother here told me that once you grasped the importance of the subject at hand, you were very eager to rectify your earlier... well, perhaps not mistakes, you haven't actually done anything wrong, not really, but shall we say – unjustified objections...”

Father looked, he actually _looked_ at his Mother, how he did with the phrasing and that alone told Draco how very important this issue was to the man – he was clearly willing to be very careful not to make his son head for the woods in panic at the delicate matter and if the blond was in any less fragile state of mind, he wouldn't have minded roasting his old man a little; after all, it was his fault that he had to keep such a tight lid on the pot of his true feelings, wasn't it?!

But not today. It was only morning, a grey, sodden one at that, with rain gently tapping down the glassed surfaces, but Draco already felt the weight of the words hiding behind his father's joy crushing and smothering him like an iron fist, so he barely managed to smile tiredly and slowly moved to finally take his place at the offered position at the table. He knew he was stalling, but it was impossible to know what his mother – damn her agility! - schemed up for him; however, he had a sickening feeling that whatever it was, it was going to happen a lot faster than he was in a condition to deal with. He knew he had to pick out his words carefully not to bury himself head first into something he didn’t see coming.

“Well, I suppose Mother and I _did_ come to some sort of... agreement last night,” he started slowly and shot a glance at his mother to see how he was doing, but Narcissa’s face, as always, was impenetrable. His anger flared a little at such a lack of guidance and his Malfoyian arrogance rose to the surface in a surge:

“Given my current engagement at Hogwarts this year, which keeps me rather busy...” he lied flatly as his work at the Academy was the last thing on his mind, “...we have reached a consensus that I really cannot be actively engaged in organising all the social activities necessary to establish myself in search of... extending the Malfoy line,” the very mention of the words like “ _bride_ ” or “ _wife_ ” leaning so heavy on his heart and tongue that he couldn’t bear to say them.

“So Mother had kindly agreed to take these responsibilities off my shoulders and offered to make the necessary preparations herself,” he finished miserably and by the pleased look Narcissa finally shot him, he knew he had done well. Only... it felt as if he had just buried all of his dreams under a solid weight of these few sentences and threw heavy shovels of dirt over them. His very heart suddenly felt tired and old.

But then he unexpectedly felt a narrow heavy hand on his back and as his head shot up in surprise he found himself looking into the grey eyes of his father, lit up from inside as he had hardly ever seen them.

“I cannot tell you how very proud you’ve made me, son,” the older man said quietly and Draco thought, incredulously, that there was a hint of a quiver in his steely voice, almost as if a genuine emotion of gratitude was trying to make its way onto the surface. And suddenly he had felt a pang of shame and sympathy for him. He knew Father rarely ever spoke of his feelings; he merely barked out commands and shot uncompromising opinions left and right, but surely, he must have had some, if only ever for his little family.

An unexpected memory swam to his mine of how very wretched he had looked when he came looking for him in the Final battle, how very relieved when they were finally reunited and how very eagerly he had hurried to protect him. It must have been a dreadful burden to him, knowing that the entire future of the Malfoy line depended on one single heir to the Malfoy name and that he had somehow contributed to placing this person, his son, amidst the mortal peril. Even if there were no parental feelings of affection involved, the weight of his guilt would have been overwhelming.

But it was the Malfoy way: one son, for centuries, so there would be no quarrels as to the name and the heritage. Draco was almost certain that there must have been “ _accidents_ ” in the long line of the Malfoy family, stretching all the way back to the days of Merlin himself. Accidents, such as first-born daughters, that were probably disowned, disregarded or put away; coincidences, such as another son or daughter making an unexpected appearance, perhaps twins in the first go, first-borns that died or proved unfit to inherit the name... But the law of the Malfoy family was as ruthless as its members had been: one son – and what happened to the rest, never made it to the family history. And as Draco stared into his father’s eyes at that moment, he felt the solid weight of the decision to be tied to such a family fate.

“I have no heart in this,” he spoke so suddenly that he surprised himself with the truth that slipped out. “But I will do it for you, Father. As a gesture of gratitude to you and to Mother for keeping me safe until I could make such a choice. I was born and raised a Malfoy, I know no other way and the Malfoy way is the way of the family, always has been. So I will do your bidding, Father, Mother, with no regard to myself. I only ask it of you not to question my choices once my duty had been fulfilled.”

He read the shock and the disbelief rise in his father's grey eyes as clearly as if it had been spoken out, but he could no longer do this. His appetite gone, he felt as if the very walls of the Manor were squashing his chest in and he needed some fresh air and open space badly or he would have collapsed on the spot. Rising so abruptly from the table, he knocked down the chair behind him, barely registering his mother's worried “ _Draco, darling..._ ”

He stopped her from descending upon him by simply rising his hand as in defence and somehow she must have read clearly how much stress he had put himself under, because she stopped dead in her track.

“Later, Mother, please...” he managed in a choked voice, before he disapparated and left a chaos of his parents' lives behind with no thought to their worry and distress. There was just one place he could go to and, in spite of Ron's last words to him, it was not Hogwarts.

Further wretched by the long-distance apparation he barely kept his footing when he breathed in the familiar scent of the place, the warm smell of the melted candle-wax, the rich smell of the polished wooden furniture, the faint scent of fresh linen that always hung about the small apartment – Wheezy was particularly meticulous about this... and another smell, the faint scent of a familiar presence that had no business being here... And yet... He turned around hastily, led purely by want and instinct... and almost fell dizzy at the sight. 

He was already there, filling the cosy armchair in the corner of the room with his tall muscled frame, his long legs planted apart like those of a king on a throne and in his majestic pagan beauty he was the most gorgeous, scariest thing Draco had ever seen. And he had foolishly kept him waiting... His legs moved out of his own accord and he approached him slowly, almost in reverence, like a believer would his god and couldn't take his eyes off him, suddenly all too aware of how badly he was trembling.

Clad only in the very same leather pants he had on the night he seduced Harry and the silken magical shirt Draco had given him, holding on to every contour of his breath-taking body with the rich deep purple colour almost making him glow in the half-light of a grey day, he was bare-feet and god-like and the one thing, the only thing Draco ever wanted from life. The closer he came the stronger he felt the magical pull of those hypnotising blue eyes, waiting for him at the end of his journey, as deep and inviting as the ancient sea and just as deceptively calm. He gradually came to a halt, unsure how to proceed, with his head light and spinning and with a sinking feeling that he would just be left standing there until he could find the words, the right words he had promised him... But right now everything was blank.

He couldn't find a thought to spare as he stared into the beloved pretty face, framed by the silken river of fiery hair, for once allowed to flow freely and in stark contrast with the pallor of the creamy complexion; the clash of colours somewhat mellowed by the spray of adorable freckles running across a bridge of the aquiline nose and accentuating the soft curve of the mouth. The glossy fan of auburn eyelashes threw long shadows down the pale cheeks and the hint of dark circles under the eyes gave the quiet redhead an air of sophistication. And none of it mattered, because Draco was lost and drowning in the irises so blue and starry as he was ever going to see them and his knees gave way before he could stop them.

Shattered to the feet of his pagan redheaded god, the grey eyes captured somewhere deeply in the Universe of blue, he finally spoke in a shaky voice, barely audible words every bit as breathless, ragged and broken as he felt.

“I'm a Malfoy, Ron... We were not made to crawl, we are not allowed to surrender... we were never meant to beg... And yet... I came here... I came here because there is nothing else left for me to do... I've got nowhere to run from what we are, what you are to me... I've got no one to give... this. Myself. No name, no wealth, no good breeding, no pride. Just myself. And my heart. No one would have me this way... but you. You saw through my emptiness, my arrogance, my cold. You broke my worthless armour and reached for my heart still beating and now it wants no one but you. And so I came here... to crawl if you'll have me crawl, to surrender because I want to... to beg you... to take it. Please, Ron, just this... please...”

The last word died smothered by the greedy, unforgiving mouth and if Draco Malfoy never knew how it was to be claimed, he would have found out right now, under the brutal heavenly mouth of one Ron Weasley. With the echo of his desperate plea still lingering in the air, the redhead had reached for him and pulled him into his lap as if he weighed nothing, seeking out and finding his mouth hungrily, etching his unspoken desire and stubborn, victorious love straight into his lover's tender flesh.

“You shut up,” he growled dangerously into those sweet surrendered lips drinking famished kisses as if they were made of life itself.

“Shut up,” he breathed straight down that endless aristocratic neck, arched before him in all its vulnerability like a pagan offering.

“Shut up, shut up, shut up...” he whispered desperately on top of that very spot of life beating madly against his tongue and moaned lost in the overwhelming sensation: “Who wouldn't have you... just look at you... look at you.”

As he sank his teeth around it, to mark it, to own it, to drink from it, his muffled cry got lost in the yelp of pure ecstasy, so very primal, it could hardly be coming from the ethereal marble-skinned god in his arms... The lithe body of the blond tensed and buckled under his rough touch as if his words broke something inside the man and when the thin fingers sunk into the mass of golden red hair to keep him spilling love at this very spot, there was no doubt what it was that Draco Malfoy craved. 

“Beautiful... god, you're beautiful...” the redhead moaned lost, surrendered at last as his soft decadent lips hurriedly devoured every inch of the marble skin with a million butterfly kisses, painting it flushed and alive, setting it on fire. “I missed you so... I always miss you... and I want you... god, how I want you, I have no words for this... I told myself not to think of you... I tried, I god-honest tried, my silver-eyed devil... but I can't let you go. I miss this heavenly scent of your skin on mine, I miss it like crazy... I smell it in my dreams, no one comes close to smelling the way you do, so incredibly sexy and... alluring and expensive, only for me. I breathe you in and I'm done for. Fucking addict, that's what I am...

I get hard just thinking about your smooth skin sliding against mine, the sweet scent of your heat, the hot taste of your sweat, rolling down this heavenly body in tiny pearls... Merlin, man, you've made a poet out of me... and a fucking pervert. I've never wanked so much in my life, I can't seem to stop every time I think of you... only all the fucking time. My life is so goddamn complicated and here I am, fucking my fist every five minutes thinking of you moaning and writhing underneath me and I'm ready to come.... Oh, yeah... just like this.... I know how you like it, gorgeous, I'll never take it from you again... just... let me play a little... I missed this so...”

A desperate angry whimper of protest left the blond's mouth unwarranted when he felt the strong hands push him an inch away from at infernal body he couldn't stand to lose, not even for a second - but that's what it was, only a split second. The next moment he felt the force of the momentum transport him through the room and deposit him mercilessly onto the king-sized bed, their bed - and he moaned again, this time in pleasure, because finally, fucking god, finally, the muscled hot body slid on top of him, pinning him down with its magnificent weight and sinking him deeper into the soft mattress. Merlin, he loved this, loved being dominated like this, if only ever by his passionate blue-eyed demon, his beloved, his Ron...

He wrapped himself around him, determined he would no longer let go and an embarrassingly garbled and pleading _“Gods, Ron, please...”_ fled out of his mouth when he felt the plush wet mouth chuckle softly into his skin, only to proceed by ravishing it with tiny maddening bites, lavishing and spoiling his most sensitive, most intimate spots. His cries and pleas turned into one long unbroken litany of worship to the decadent pleasure he was receiving. 

“Merlin, you're hot when you want it...”

The soft greedy mouth was suddenly at his ear and when hot breath caressed the sensitive shell, Draco was seconds from coming. But Ron didn't seem to notice as if he had a confession to make and make it he would even if he made his lover blow his load in the process.

“Look at you, just look at you blabbering all that filth with that beautiful posh mouth of yours... Christ, I love your dirty mouth.... You’ve fucked me up, my beautiful silver snake, fucked me up completely. All this unspoilt surface of virgin skin laid before me... mine, to mark and to ruin and to worship... this fucking expensive smell I wish I could bottle rolling off it like steam... god, baby...

Want some help getting rid of this bloody complicated garment you insist on wearing, then? It’s just... I’d love to take it off slowly, watch you undress, cause it’s the sexiest fucking thing on the planet watching you strip and I'm left dying for a glimpse of that perfect body of yours coming to light... Merlin, you’re gorgeous, you have no idea...  but I’ve got a bit of an emergency going on, precious, because right now, _right-fucking-now_ , I want nothing else but to fuck you raw and hard... sink into you fast... and deep, oh, so deep, again and again and again... lick your skin and taste how much you want it...”

“Ron, don't...” the blond gasped as the soft wet tongue slowly outlined the edge of his jaw as if the redhead tried to paint him with the stokes of the skilled slick muscle and he was desperate to make him stop because there was no way in hell he was going to survive this ordeal without his balls exploding. But Ron was oblivious to his begging, deaf to his pleading whimpers; in a world of his own, his words kept on seeping in like poisonous flood, infecting Draco with dangerous, reckless expectation of having his dreams come true.

“God, there’s a million little ways in which you undo me... your special Draco ways.... no one does it the way you do... It’s not only these incredible long legs you wrap around me when you want me to ride you... though the way they feel now.... mother of god, precious, just how badly do you need it, my randy little blondie? You know, I always had a thing for blonds, beautiful... and they don’t come much blonder than you... I love how you let me roll these soft silken locks around my fingers when we get ready to fuck, like so... How could I ever hope to forget the sight of you... like this... this gorgeous body captured underneath me? You make me feel so goddamn special, the way your whole body tenses around me...  the way your nipples go hard just at the sight of me – yeah, I felt that last night when you pressed against me, they were as hard as pebbles and I almost fucked you into the ground right next to that godforsaken bonfire, my beautiful debauched prince...

I love... every... little... filthy incoherent word my cock pushes out of you when I breach you... yesss, baby.... say it... I can't get enough of the way this sinful soft mouth of yours begs me for it... oh, yeah... when my cock hits that spot.... _this_ spot inside you, baby... this one... this very one that releases the very devil out of you... and makes you scream... scream for me, beautiful... harder, baby, harder... God you're to die for when you trash about... Now look at me, baby. Just.... look at me, Draco.”

Draco barely heard the command whispered straight into the litany of embarrassing pleas and curses pouring out of his mouth like an unstoppable dirty flood, but there was something in Ron's voice that made him obey, made him open his eyes and he was doomed. The light coming from the bluest starry skies of Ron's eyes made him forget his own name, his world seemed to come to a halt when he stared down to the very bottom of the soul of one Ron Weasley - and saw his own image looking right back at him.

Ron spoke and there was urgency in his dishevelled voice as if he was desperate to tell Draco something and he could only hope his words got through the way he had meant them:

“It's the way you look at me from inside these silver eyes of your, my gorgeous blond angel... the way you say my name... as if I'm _it_ for you... the piece that misses to make you complete... because this is exactly the way I feel about you, precious. When I left you, I lost myself... a part of myself that only lives inside those unforgettable silver eyes when you look at me and surrender to me, my prince....

You left me incomplete, Draco Malfoy... incomplete... you beautiful debauched bastard... damn you to hell and back... I never.... ever... want to feel this way again.... my gorgeous blond god... and I'm going to punish you for it now.... I’m going to break you, so you’re never whole again either... not without me... ever...  Gods, baby.... so close... so fucking close.... You can't ever leave me... again... not again... Christ, Draco... say it baby, you know I won't let you come unless you scream it... the way I need it from you...  Let go... for me... release me... ”

“Ron... please... Ron... I love you, Ron... I love you, baby... only you... please.... God... you... now, _godpleasenow_.... _yes_ , _ohchristandfuckingmerlinron_ , yesss!!!”

His body arched in explosion of ecstasy so brutal his howl broke in two by breathless numbness and when that incredible shaft rammed inside him one last time, the hot endless necklaces of pearly come bursting over and over his sensitive insides, the soft mouth spelling wet, incoherent confession into his skin finally undid the last of him and the hot breath shot him straight to Heaven:

“I love you... I love you, too, Draco... love you, my silver dragon...”

He never felt such completion, such absolute perfection of the Universe, such equilibrium of forces that ruled him from within, such lightness, such light, such brilliant richness of nothingness... such unity with the man he loved wrapped around him. He knew now what it meant being one with God for he was one with _his_ god, with this wonderful cruel messed up man buried deep inside of him, stilling his tempest, anchoring his restlessness, balancing his world so badly out of meaning and order, making him feel at peace, at last. He was finally put together, he was complete. Draco Malfoy found his true happiness inside the arms of Ron Weasley and he was never prepared to let go. He would not throw the precious gift away, he couldn’t.

The first thing he felt when he swam out of blackness was Ron’s dead weight crushing him into the mattress, the sweat-slick hot skin covering him from head to toe, the tremendous beat of his heart, banging like a drum against his chest the way it almost resonated inside his own body, a flood of incoherent swear words _“...fuck, fucking fuck... god almighty, what the fuck was that again… how the hell does he do that to me, every.bloody.time?!”_ – and he chuckled breathlessly and couldn’t be happier. Though he could barely breathe he didn’t want to leave his shelter under the scorching hot muscled body; his every word, however crude, just a sweet ode to their love in his ears. He was completely boneless; simply and utterly happy right where he was and he wasn’t about to break the spell for the sake of some comfort. A Malfoy here. Comfort was not mandatory; comfort he could do without, Ron - he couldn't.

But finally his lover seemed to have come to his senses enough to slip out of him with unexpected tenderness and care as if he kept in mind how sore he was going to leave him. He shifted some of his weight onto his own arms and when he lifted his head an inch to look at him, Draco met his eyes in the warm half-light of the shelter made by the silken red hair. He smiled into the mesmerized blue eyes sweetly and pressed a small almost boyish kiss into the corner of his mouth.

“Hi,” he whispered and with a tired grunt Ron just collapsed all over him again, making him smile.

“God, blondie...”

Ron's voice was still unsteady and his breath ragged as if he had run a marathon and when he finally turned his head to look at him, he seemed somewhat awed as if he wasn't entirely certain what had just happened.

“How _the hell_ is it, that every time I try to talk to you, like... seriously, we end up fucking instead?! This... it's just insane... “ he finally managed tiredly, but it somehow his words elicited such a brilliant and carefree smile from Draco that his brain kind of temporarily froze and he lost the trail of his thoughts.

“It must be because I'm so incredibly irresistible,” the blond proposed teasingly, his features still lit up by the beautiful smile and the complete happiness ruling inside him. “There was nothing you could have done. It's the Malfoy charm, might as well accept the defeat, Mr. I-want-my-precious-control-back-and-I-want-it-now.”

A ringing laughter escaped him when he saw Ron's stupefied expression and when the redhead watched him laugh like that, unabashed and with almost child-like innocence, still somewhat breathless, covered in a thin sheet of sweat and bruising marks of their love-making, his heart almost burst with ache at the beauty of the sight. A happy Draco Malfoy was a heavenly sight, a sight for the gods alone.

“Do you have any fucking idea how beautiful you are, precious?” he asked in a quiet stunned voice and blurted out quickly like he couldn't help it: “Why do you even want me? Why me, when you could have any one?”

And the blond allowed himself to once again get lost in those sapphire blue pools of innocent brilliance and the truth slipped out of his mouth with ease, as if he couldn't wait to finally say it:

“Because you're the only one for me; always was, always will be. Malfoys only love once, Ron, my father told me that in one of the rare moments I ever got to see his softer side and I know it in my heart to be true. This is what you bought when you first kissed me. Me. My heart. You might not have thought anything of it, but for me... I've never felt such a thing before... of after. With no one.”

His thumbs gently outlined the soft bottom lip of that beloved mouth that held a key to so much pleasure and he smiled gently, incredibly sexy at the treasured memory:

“The second your lips touched me, something slipped to place and I was never the same again. No one could ever make me feel so... complete. It was always only you. I tried... others. But you just looked at me, with red hot anger, with cold disdain, with that special _“I-hate-you-Malfoy”_ passionate look in your eyes and my heart almost exploded in my chest. You could have had me any day after that kiss, you only needed to stop, take a look at me and claim what was yours for the taking. I would have been yours, I was already yours.”

His fingers smoothed out the tiny crow feet at the corners of those mesmerizing eyes and the blond sighed with a bitter-sweet smile at the memory of those innocent days, filled with wonderful scary dreams and frustrating awkwardness:

“But you wouldn't.... look at me, I mean. You wouldn't look at me and I was desperate and I had to make you. I wrote you that god-awful song, didn't I? That should have been your first clue, who'd put that much work in for someone they didn't care about!? It was... slightly different before Pansy caught me writing it, but somehow I felt “ _Weasley is my king_ ” wouldn't have made me too popular among the Slytherins – there's a reason you’re a Gryffindor and I'm not. And even when the song failed to work I sought you out any chance I got, I hurt you, I kicked at your most vulnerable spots, I provoked you until I saw that mindless rage light up your eyes and I knew you'd go for me and you'd knock me down and wrap around me and... God almighty, I'd barely make it to the dorm after that, I'd wank myself raw for days to come! Merlin, those days... what a mess I was! I hated myself for wanting you so, but I couldn't help it, I couldn't stop obsessing about you.”

He pressed their cheeks together and whispered his sweet little secret softly into the shell of his ear, into the silken darkness of the red hair:

“It's still there, you know... After all these years I only have to look at you and my heart goes on a rampage. I can't believe you finally saw me, it feels like a miracle every time you look at me.... really _look_ at me, the way you did before... when we made love... my heart must have stopped for a minute or something. I came here to ask you... to beg you, not to take that away from me... but I saw you sitting there so breath-takingly beautiful and mighty, like a pagan god of old, and my _every_ thought just froze on the spot. But... I'd like to say it now, with your permission.”

He pressed a final enticing kiss into a sensitive spot just under his ear and looked him straight into that astonishing, pretty face an asked quietly:

“Please, Ron... don't let go of me. I cannot survive the rest of my life without you. Please - what little you can give me, I don't expect much. I know you have a life from me and I must make mine away from you as well, I owe it to my parents who have no one to pin their hopes on but me – but I'm asking you not to leave me behind entirely. I need this... _us_ , somehow, some way, I'll find us a way if you only let me. Please, don't...”

“Shhhh...”

The redhead silenced him with a warm, incredibly sensual kiss on the mouth, his lips seeking him out with unexpected tenderness, working him slowly, gently, almost chastely – until their tongues touched and their barely held back moans wrapped around each other like invisible serpents made of hot breath and desire.

“Shut up, beautiful, and stop begging... stop arguing. Done. It's already done. I couldn't get away if I wanted to. You're mine now, Draco Malfoy, body and soul. You are my past, my present and I wow to make you my future. I won't let go. Not anymore, I was stupid to try, I shouldn't have bothered. We were meant to be with each other, I can feel it in my bones, I can feel it in my body slipping to its place next to you so perfectly; it was always written all over my dumb blind heart. I was scared, my beautiful blond treasure, but I'm not scared anymore. I will find you a spot in my life, find us a way somehow. It's already done. Can't let you go now. I want you in my life. I need you... and so help me god, I love you.”

Draco couldn't stop a small moan escaping him at a quiet confession, so shy, yet so priceless, but it had slipped straight into the soft hungy mouth, because not for a moment did the magical creature stop stealing sweet butterfly kisses from his lover between his words and Draco felt his loins stirring wildly as if there was untameable beast hiding inside there that craved to be fed.

“Ron...” he moaned pleadingly, but the redhead wouldn’t stop as if he was desperate to let his body spell out every tender feeling he held for the man in his arms.

“I started this for all the wrong reasons; I kissed you all those years back for a wrong reason and the way I found our kiss so very unforgettable should have really been my first clue – but you know how oblivious I can be. Then you came to me again, months ago – gods, was it really only months, it feels like years now! - and I couldn't resist you. I reached out for you without a second thought, out of sheer blistering arrogance, out of stupid vanity - and then took you for granted. I felt something between us, something that inexplicably pulled me towards you and the sex part was - is - just... out of this world, I've never experienced anything quite so mind-shattering, it's to bloody die for, isn't it? So I delusionally thought we’d just have a bit of fun....

God, was I ever a mean oblivious idiot... right up until the moment when I realized that I could no longer think of you as just a fling, my sex-toy, my occasional lover... because all of the sudden I fantasized about you _all the time_ , I sought your presence, not just sex, but that incredible closeness we have, that addictive feeling that I could be completely myself around you... And I got scared.”

He suddenly kissed him on his mouth, full on, as if he knew no other way to apologize for hurting him; he pulled them into a hard, demanding kiss that took all the playfulness out of their seductive mouth-to-mouth game and left them panting, disorientated and desperate for more. But Ron was the master of the fine art of seduction, his tongue dipped one last time deeply into the Slytherin’s eager mouth to fill him with liquid flame and then the wonderful instrument of sweet torture disappeared and left every nerve-ending in Draco’s body tingling with maddening desire.

He moaned in quiet frustration, but the redhead bit his lower lip enticingly and smiled somewhere from the bottom of his blue irises, looking every bit like a devil himself, and the blond knew this was a promise, spoken plain and simple in some crazy Ron language that he was fluent in, that there was much more in stock for him where this came from if only he heard him out... and Merlin, he could have raped and ravaged him right now, that's how badly he wanted it, but really, did he even have a choice? They've always played this by Ron's rules and this time it was no exception. Besides, a part of him was anxious to hear what Ron had to say, he needed a glimpse into that complicated head of his, holding answers to so many of his questions. A gentle kiss into the corner of his mouth had to do... for now.

“Some Gryffindor I am...” Ron sighed as if he couldn't quite shake the burden of all his past wrong-doings. “As soon as you spoke out your feelings, precious... I recognised my own, saw them for what they were, and they frightened the hell out of me. I didn’t want to be in love with you... I didn’t want to! It was terrifying and it felt like treachery of everything I hold dear and not to mention the god-awful impossible timing.... So I did the easiest, stupidest thing and I ran, not realizing that it was already too late. You take your heart with you wherever you go, did you know that? – well, I learned that lesson the hard way. I could not let you go. I couldn’t. The harder I tried, the worse it got and pretty soon you were all I could think about. I was infected by that terrible devastating love I didn’t want and I fought it tooth and nail. I should have known better.... I should have known my heart, my love.”

His fingers began toying with the long blond locks of hair, sinking into the silken golden mess made by their love-making and Draco had a passing thought what a terrible, dishevelled sight he must make, but Ron didn’t seem to find anything other than awe and admiration for the rich silver-blond locks.    

“No wonder my treacherous body betrays me every time I get near you... look at you, blondie...” he whispered and kissed him hungrily, just once, as if he couldn’t resist it. “Sweet Godric, baby, you have no idea how addictive you are... I couldn’t leave you behind when you were ill and I couldn't do it when you returned to school. It was pure torture to sit near you in the same room and feel your eyes linger on me, the light in them dying slowly, when all I wanted to do was to hold you close and tell you how crazy in love you’ve made me. I cannot stand to see you crushed; I couldn’t bring myself to trample all your hopes even though I knew I should have... So I slipped time and time again and Merlin knows how much longer I would have played the twisted hurtful games with you, if it wasn’t for that thing yesterday...

My pulse was already racing like mad when we lost Freddie in the crowd, but when I saw you take a dive towards the bonfire to save him - I swear my heart stopped dead. I saw you knock him to the ground right before the flames could have him and I knew he was alright, but when my heart started to beat again it was just a battle-drum of anxiety and love I didn’t know it was capable of. I swear I saw red. I couldn’t fucking breathe, I was choked by all the over-whelming emotions and all my stupid brain was screeching at me was: _“What if something happened to him and you’d never get a chance to tell him how you felt about him, you blasted idiot!?”_

So I knew. The moment I saw my son was alright and you were not harmed, I knew I had to tell you. I didn’t know if you still wanted it, my tainted selfish undeserving love, but it was all I had to give and it was going to be yours if you asked for it. So I offered. Anything, I said. And I meant it. You could have asked me to walk out of that place holding hands and I would have done it, that’s how bad you got me. And when she asked last night... when my brilliant wife, my Hermione asked if I was having an affair with you, I told her the truth. I told her I loved you.”

The shock couldn’t have been bigger if he had punched Draco in the stomach.

“You... you’ve told your wife about us?!” he gasped, unable to believe his own ears and his head suddenly spinning with all the open possibilities. But Ron just nodded thoughtfully, almost matter-of-factly, and added on a second thought:

“And I was willing to tell Harry. I offered to answer all his questions and I would have told him the truth, had he asked. But he wouldn’t. Harry... he doesn’t want to know; says, he doesn’t want to lose me. He only asked me if I loved him and if I would ever leave him, but for the rest... he promised never to ask.”

“So do you? And... would you?” Draco asked quietly and he didn’t have to be more specific. Ron just looked at him with sadness in those lovely blue eyes and nodded quietly.

“I do. I love him, too. Even for you, I cannot lie. And I can’t leave him, ever. Always, I promised during my hand-fasting and I meant it then as I mean it now. I don’t want a world without Harry, he’s the best of us, always was, always will be. Only... the best sometimes isn’t right for me... _But you are._ You’re just right. You’re everything he isn’t and could never be, because he’s too good and noble and perfect and has no understanding for all my faults. But you do.

You understand jealousy, you understand greed, even malice, you know how it is to wish for things you could never have, you know how it feels to want to be more than you are, but you cannot, because you’re only ever you and that should be good enough for someone. I found myself in you, because you’re imperfect, just like I am, and together we complete each other. I cannot be a perfect match for someone who’s already perfect on his own, but I can be your other half, Draco Malfoy. If only you still want it. I’ll be yours. I cannot give you my whole life as I barely got a hold of it myself, but I'll give you this: my heart. And all the time that I can spare. I’ll find us a way. Somehow. If you'll have me.”

“Yes... gods, yes...” Draco whispered without a second thought and the echo of his words already drowned in a kiss so passionate and desperate as if Ron couldn't wait to finally have his answer, his permission to possess him again, to set him on fire by the gentle play of their tongues, to sink down his heavenly body and mark every inch of it for his own, to taste him on all the forbidden hidden places that made his toes curl.

He wanted to hear him whisper all those quiet heated confessions he could say to no one else - _“You can't tell anyone... but my favourite colour is not green, it's blue, the colour of your eyes”, “I want to see the morning light reflect in your hair once, I want to wake up with you”, “You're the only one I ever kissed, you're my first and you will be my last”_ , _“I love you, Ron, make me fall apart...”_ ; he needed to make him stutter his name, lost in ecstasy; he just _had to_ sink into him once more, time and time again, and spell his name inside of him with every magnificent shove of his hips, with every pleading scream, with every inviting move of that addictive body begging for more.

He just loved fucking him crazy... but he loved the expectation of what came after even more. It was his own little challenge to make that beautiful well-bred man so wild and messed up he'd spill out any embarrassing thought, any secret fantasy and lustful desire... but what he loved the best, was the part when he lay in his arms breathless, boneless, smelling of sex like a god and still holding on for dear life.

He couldn't get enough of ravaging that divine body, as perfect as the virgin winter landscape, but what he could no longer imagine his life without were those sweet, almost domestic private moments they shared; simply lying and cuddling together, talking about everything and nothing, having silly food fights that only ever left them panting and wrapped around each other amidst the forgotten food, long showers together that pretty much had the same unproductive ending, falling asleep inside each other's arms...

He loved ravelling in his debauched sex-stained beauty, watching him writhe underneath him until it all ended when he fell apart with a scream – but most of all he loved waking up with the blond head tucked into his neck and - sometimes - the grey eyes turned silver simply watching him with peace, love and a bit of awe that never failed to make his heart soar in pride. He couldn't let go of that, he couldn't. He wasn't strong enough, there wouldn't be enough of him left to go around if he left that behind, he could never again be whole without him.

His cock hot and heavy, leaking and begging for release, he watched the gorgeous sinful body rock back and forth in an ancient rhythm, at insane speed, and finally quiver and arch like a beautiful marble bridge to Heaven beneath him - and like every time, every bloody time, when he heard him curse and stutter his name through his release, he couldn't help blowing his load on the spot like a teenager... It was just... the man, his man, was so magnificently beautiful, wasn't he?... so magical and exquisite, spilling himself empty all over his marble body, his eyes rolled backwards into the Infinity only he could see, bitten, damaged lips still whispering of filth and love all mingled into one glorious symphony written for Ron alone – how could it not make his cock explode, make his vision go black, nor have his heart burst with unfathomable confessions of love he didn't even know he held inside...?

When he finished inside him at last, trembling and without an atom of strength to spare, the lost _“Draco... fuck... Draco, love....”_ still lingering on his lips, he took a long luxurious moment to look at him spread underneath him like a pagan offering, completely boneless, long lean muscles covered in sweat, bruises and come, his silken long hair dishevelled and lips swollen from rough kisses while the silver eyes still stared blindly somewhere into the universe of ecstasy and completion – and he was the most beautiful creature he had every laid eyes on.

He knew he was addicted, captured, in love – but he didn't care anymore. He wanted this man underneath him, wanted him beyond anything reasonable and right, because there was no reason and not much right in what they had. But he wanted him anyway, they wanted and needed and craved each other and Ron was done thinking how to undo the unbreakable spell. He watched him come to his senses, because it was just the most adorable thing in the world and covered him with his body, the way he knew he loved it. He never felt more loved in his life when the narrow long fingers sank into his hair and the soft lips began caressing the tender skin on his neck with a million tired butterfly kisses.

“....mmmm love u....” was the silliest, most unintelligible love statement from a usually very eloquent and snarky young man and it put a big happy grin on Ron's face. He made the effort to capture his lips with his mouth and while he spoiled him with a long lavishing kiss, he used the opportunity to slip out of him, earned himself a bitten lower lip and ended up cuddling up to the lithe, destroyed body.

“I'm dead,” declared the blond, barely able to come up with a mumble. “You've killed me and now you're going to have to dispose of my body and tell my parents what you've done.”

“In that case, my beautiful blond incubus, I might just bury this delectable body under these sheets and continue to ravage this little inferi whenever my sinful urges take over... how about this, gorgeous? This way I'll never have to tell your parents anything, who would ever think to look for you here?”

“Actually...” mumbled a tired, sleepy voice near his ear. “You really shouldn't bother. My mother already knows.”

Ron's head snapped up so quickly he almost gave himself a whiplash and he stared down at the pretty, smiling face with a look of complete horror and disbelief in his eyes.

“She knows,” he repeated stupidly, as if he couldn't believe his own ears. “How does she know?! What does she know!? How much?! How long?! How did she find out?!”

“Saw us...” mumbled Draco, too worn out for lengthy explanations. “Yesterday, at the bonfire. Was worried about me... followed me in secret and knew immediately. She once had... she knew your father once,” he remembered the promise he gave his mother about keeping her secret and barely managed to avoid  the tar-pit in front of him. “She recognised you and made me promise all kinds of things to keep our secret... marriage, child... don't even know what I agreed to – but as a trade off she promised to help... this... us. And now she wants to talk to you,” he added almost as an after-thought and for once Ron Weasley was out of words and out of wit. Narcissa Malfoy was bloody scary and definitely the one ally he never expected to have.

But the unrelenting arms pulled him down into another greedy, enticing kiss and once the soft breath found access into his mouth together with the tip of the slick curious tongue, working its magic, his last rational thought was – _fuck it_ , whatever life had in store for him, these moments of tenderness and intimacy with the man he fell in love with, were worth it. And he sank deeply into the shadow to find love.


	45. Two sides of the same fabric

“ _Die Liebe ist ein wildes Tier_  
 _In die Falle gehst du ihr_  
 _In die Augen starrt sie dir_  
 _Verzaubert wenn ihr Blick dich trifft_

_Bitte bitte gib mir Gift...”_

Rammstein, Amour

 

“I have a business proposal for you, Mr. Weasley,” Narcissa Malfoy said pleasantly and Ron Weasley’s jaw might have unhinged a little.

That was the last thing he expected to hear when his beautiful - and beautifully cunning - blond lover manipulated him into meeting his mother. Blasted Slytherin...! Ron should have known better than to have himself wrapped around his aristocratic little finger! But it was what it was now and – fuck him if he knew how! - the redhead found himself staring down the ice blue eyes of Draco’s mother, seriously questioning his sanity for getting himself so tangled up with the slimy snake lot. But he was a man enough to admit defeat - the way his slick alluring blondie went about persuading him, he would have probably agreed to snap his wand in two to humour the bewitching young man...

Turn him up, turn him down, turn him three times around – his gorgeous lover was still a Malfoy, someone who learned the subtle art of manipulation at his father’s knee and knew all the little tricks how to plead with no words to get what he wanted in the end. As lame an excuse as it sounded, Ron told himself there was precious little what he could have done when that lithe marble body pressed against him, all smooth sweat-drenched skin and intoxicating smell of sex, with those bright silver eyes staring up his face with feigned innocence and unspoken pleading... Honestly, how could he have said no?! Crazy Bellatrix herself could not have denied him!

Draco Malfoy had gotten under his skin and as wrong as it all was, Ron couldn’t bring himself to care anymore. What was once a spoilt haughty boy, grew up to be a man who dove into flames to save his son without a second thought, he gave himself to Ron completely, sincerely, with no reservations, he had asked for nothing in return but to keep what little they had, their bruised and battered tender love; he had loved him stubbornly, unflinching, even when Ron didn’t want to love him back and he had made love to him, crazy, mind-boggling, heart-wrenching acts of love and surrender, every last one of them...

And for that part Ron wasn’t even sure if he could classify it under “ _making love_ ” – he’s never known such a thing before. It felt like... so much more, almost like some magical divine coupling of body and soul; one touch and their beings wrapped around each other hungrily almost like they couldn’t wait to be one again. As soon as the blond head sought shelter on his chest, something slipped into place and Ron was whole again. He could do with a little well-meant manipulation for that. There was no saying what else was he prepared to do to keep the precious thing they found in each other’s arms.

He couldn’t bring himself to let him go that day – he told himself Draco had earned him, earned to be with him ten times over for saving his son, but in his heart he knew it was much more than that. He wanted to be with him, that was where he belonged and everything else faded into the background. He knew he wasn’t expected that day; Harry was taking Ginny out, Hermione thought he was at school and would probably be pre-occupied with the new situation she had to deal with. In the evening he fire-called his mother who told him off for the late hour and refused to wake-up the children, so really – he had nowhere else to be.

And so it was that Draco Malfoy unexpectedly got his wish and woke up to the first rays of golden dawn painting a flaming halo around the fiery locks of his lover, wrapped around him in his quest for warmth. Malfoys were always admirers of all things beautiful and the exquisite beauty of first sunlight reflecting on the silken red carpet of brilliant hair spilled around the peacefully sleeping Ron Weasley almost stopped this Malfoy's heart. Draco found himself breathless just watching him, watching the gentle fingers of sun draw pale shadows under a fan of long auburn eyelashes down the adorably freckled cheeks – and when the redhead unexpectedly opened his sea-blue eyes, blinking the naughty sunrays away, he suddenly found himself under the kissing attack of one very smitten Slytherin who had no other way to tell him how heart-stopping he found the surface of deep blue irises reflecting the morning light and his own image.

“Hey, blondie...” he had murmured, barely awake, but this was just too nice a way to wake up for him to consider much protest. He had instinctively felt that the young man by his side was in need of closeness and that special feeling of belonging they shared and he didn't mind indulging him a little. After all, this was their first proper morning together; up until this day it was always _“need to go”_ , _“have to be places”_ , _“I've stayed far too long already”_ \- and now it was this; just them, no pretence, no excuse, nowhere they'd rather be.

They had made love slowly, the way they never managed to do a day before, the way they hardly _ever_ had the time to do before. Draco closed his eyes and breathed in his precious scent, his very presence, the smell of himself on him and it brushed against something long forgotten that melted him from inside and filled him up until he felt as if he's going to burst if he wouldn't find a way to get it out in the open.

“I love you,” he blurted out and then he couldn't stop saying it when he felt his beloved mouth gently marking his body, drinking him in, sowing his skin with small moans and broken _“god, blondie... you're beautiful”_ and _“please... need to own you”._..

“I love you,” he told him. “I love you, I love you, I love you...” he whispered frantically as he could no longer keep his emotions at bay and those abandoned used up words were all he had to tell him how very much he needed this, needed them to be, to happen, to melt into that perfect unity, that priceless solid bond that was beyond words. The broken syllables were running feverish from his mouth among the more urgent and incoherent sounds of burning need, like somehow love melted his heart and it was now pouring out through his mouth, through his skin, through his every breath. Ron's tenderness burned his flesh from within and he couldn't get enough of the searing need slowly etched into his skin with those light adept fingers and a soft hot breath whispered from the blasphemous mouth: _“You like that, baby...? Here... for you, precious... here's some more...”_

His body already arching to his every touch, his blood surging violently against the cage of his skin, his heartbeat frantic and out of control, he was desperate to open up for him, to let himself be filled up and mastered from the inside and in one mad act of rebellion he had flipped him over and slipped into his lap, their hot throbbing shafts suddenly perfectly aligned with each other, all soft skin and bursting hardness, eliciting a loud double moan.

“Draco...” he heard him exhale in a strained voice and when he looked deep into the mesmerizing blue eyes, there was just a flicker of surprise before the incredibly sexy smile emerged straight from those alluring blue orbs and Ron whispered invitingly: “All yours for the taking, baby...”

Torn between the craving for at least some meager chance of control and the itching, desperate need to have himself spread and fucked and ruled by that magnificent cock, tearing him apart and putting him back together all at once, he sunk down onto that divinely sculpted body and brought his wet abused mouth straight to his ear:

“Play with me,” he whispered with hot breath. “Play with yourself... like this... lying down... I want to watch... I’ll tell you when I want it... make me want it, Ron... make me yearn for it...”

The words barely left his mouth when he felt the strong hands catch just under the soft orbs of his pert arse and lift him onto his knees, wrapped tightly around the narrow waist. His arse-cheeks were suddenly spread, leaving him exposed and ready to be plundered and the tip of his cock was still gently rubbing against the swollen shaft leaking pearls of precome against the trail of fine red hairs. This very image, the incredible vulnerable feeling was to die for and when Ron’s large hand sneaked between them and engulfed them both inside one massive fist, providing ungodly, mind-blowing friction, Draco forgot his own name.

His mouth plundered by a possessive sensual tongue, turning him to liquid on the spot, his cock captive inside the wet heat of the giant fist, the sensitive tip touching and rubbing against the slick spongy head of his tormentor’s shaft, making him come up with muffled screams straight into the numbing mouth, while the large calloused fingers of the other wonderfully skilled hand crawled into the cleft of his arse and began their decadent feather-light journey of probing and seduction - and Draco’s tortured overloaded senses almost made him pass out.

Reduced to incoherent blabbing he wanted to tell him that the time was now, _nownownowfuckingnow_ , that he should stop the exquisite torture and spear him with his gorgeous swollen cock and just fuck this insanity out of him because it was taking over and he was no longer himself but a slave to this depraved pleasure he was chasing, but he couldn’t squeeze a single coherent word into a litany of his pleading yelps, and he could feel himself falling apart at the seams until Ron finally took pity on him and he could feel the first thick finger, slick with god knows what, slip in.

It almost made him blow his load and he would have, had the redhead let him, but he had his expert crude ways of keeping him tethering on the edge and a mean chuckle with _“not quite yet, beautiful, you asked to play... and I’m not done yet...”_ told him he would have to endure longer, last through more of the agonizing endless moments when he was denied completion. But the horrific pleasure he craved was closing in on him, he could feel himself brushing at the very edge of tremendous release with every slick skilled finger exploring him from inside, shooting the electricity of expectation up his spine with every deliberate sensual move, set on viciously straining ropes that kept him from coming, driving him up the fucking wall. And when he was finally lifted and slowly, tortuously slowly impaled on the heavy thick cock filling him up impossibly, an outpour of unintelligible filth and broken words of desire that barely qualified as language could no longer be stopped.

“God, blondie...” moaned Ron, his smug façade finally cracking when the tense slick flesh squeezed around him and he could barely keep himself from coming. “Christ... all yours now, precious... you’re in charge...”

And it would have been a wonderful feeling of freedom and control – if Draco was any less desperate than he was. The need to topple over had become excruciating moments ago and his body screamed for it, no delays, no more toying around allowed. With a loud wanton yelp he found the right angle that shot white sparks into the darkness of behind the closed eyes and then he rode him. Sweat poured down from every pore of his alabaster body like a pearly waterfall when he had himself claimed and invaded with brutal force once again, riding the wonderful fat shaft at an insane exhilarating pace, having it charge straight into that spot of the heaven inside him time and time again until he was just a mess of screaming nerve endings and mad with desire – and he opened his eyes to the image of Ron licking the palm of his own hand with urgency.

The redhead wrapped it around the blond's abandoned begging cock, hot needy flesh swollen and bursting under the heavenly friction of the skilled rough hand, tearing him apart at the last of seams.

“For god’s sake, blondie,” he heard his redheaded devil moan, finally just as desperate as he was. “Need to come... need to come real bad, baby... need to see you break... see you spill, so I can taste it... come for me, baby... straight at me... all over me... I want to feel it in my mouth...”

And the very thought of Ron's eager mouth tasting his come had pushed him over the edge and with a loud yelp torn somewhere from out of his very core he exploded out of his gloriously released body straight into the velvet Universe of blackness that felt like home. He could feel him there, free, boundlessly happy, exhaling hot puffs of passion and breathing in starlight together with him; he could feel his presence without feeling anything else around him and if he could have it his way, he'd never leave.

He collapsed over him empty of everything but a feeling of tremendous release and savage love so overpowering it almost scared him because he had never felt such an almighty, all-encompassing thing inside him flowing through every atom of his body as if he only now became aware how very much he belonged to Ron Weasley.

“We're magic together...” he whispered and didn't even know where the thought came from, but as soon as he said it he knew it was what he really wanted to say. They were. Magical, splendid, breath-taking, unique - everything the magic was made of. He felt the large palm of Ron's hand crawl up his naked back and press him closer, warm, protective, loving, as if the Gryffindor was trying to tell him with this silent gesture that he had no better words for what they had.

“Wish I didn't have to give you up,” the blond blurted out, suddenly miserable at the very thought that he should surrender some of the wonderful closeness, so badly needed warmth soon. At the sight of his darkened face and a hint of sadness taking place at the bottom of those crystal eyes he added hastily: “I know I said whatever little I could have... and I really promised my mother... but I’m a Malfoy, Ron, we’re nothing if not greedy,” he smiled the smallest of smiles and saw it mirrored on the beloved freckled face.

“The more time I spend with you, the more I want it, want to be with you. I can't get enough of you... not only this, but other things as well, the everyday magic, all those wonderful things we could do together, not only here, but out there... go places, see wonders you cannot imagine... I’ve got the whole world to show you, I want to lay it at your feet...” he whispered and his eager words drowned on the sweet lips, their kiss every bit as desperate and on edge as they felt.

“Perhaps we'll get a bit more time... next year... when she leaves...” Ron whispered, all hot breath caressing Draco's lips; and it was meant as a weak consolation and Draco didn't understand, until it hit him... He abruptly moved away from the poisonous addictive mouth that won't let him think straight and looked at him incredulously:

“What are you on about? _“When she leaves?...”_ Who's leaving? You don't mean...?”

“My wife,” said Ron almost matter-of-factly. “Hermione. Didn't I tell you? She says she doesn't want to share me; she says she won't be punished for loving me for the rest of her life, so... She's leaving me as soon as I find a job... I might have forgotten to mention it,” he added with a sheepish grin that made him look every bit like a boy Draco once, a million years ago, knew at Hogwarts and he couldn't even be angry. Much.

“You big oaf! You most certainly forgot to mention it!” he hissed, half angrily, half despaired at such glorious folly. “One would think you would deem it important!”

“But I do, I thought I did already! Look, it is all so “ _goes without saying_ ” in my head right now that I might have forgotten to bring about a detail or two, but it was not deliberate! I haven't had a chance to say too many things ever since you came here, you know that the situation kind of, uhm, escalated quickly...”

There was a smile at the bottom of the blue eyes now and another sheepish grin at the edges of his mouth and - really, it was a good news in the end, at least from Draco's perspective, so he found that he really wasn't that angry anymore, perhaps not angry at all. He had to have a taste of that delicious smile, so he kissed him again and he wondered, oh, boy, are all their fights going to leave him so spectacularly defeated, so in a last attempt to save some of his rapidly fading reputation he mumbled:

“No more of these senile fits, Weasley! And don't forget what I _have_ told you – my mother wants to talk to you...”

“But I don't want to talk to her...” said Ron, instantly sounding every bit like a petulant child. “Your mother is downright scary and dreadfully cunning... She practically won us a war with her little “ _Harry is dead”_ stunt! The Dark Lord had nothing on her!” And it took a long stern frowning look of the grey eyes, set on reprimanding him as if he was a sulky child, for Ron to surrender his reservations. Finally he rolled up his eyes in defeat, wordlessly spelling out in his trademark _“Bloody hell, seriously?!”_ gesture and mumbled apologetically, not entirely able to hide his embarrassment:

“How can you even be sure of her intentions? What if she’s only manipulating you to do the right thing for the family and once you’re trapped...”

“Because my mother loves me!” Draco interrupted him, the grey eyes smoking in unexpected flare of anger as Ron had so flatly spoken out his deepest fears. “She loves me,” he repeated stubbornly to persuade himself as much as his lover and added in a voice more hopeful than stern: “Whatever you think of her, she loves me, and she would have given me the world if it was in her power. It’s only my father...”

He stopped abruptly before he would betray a real reason why he agreed to do his mother’s bidding in the first place – he didn’t want to think about it, not in those rare precious moments they had together; he didn’t want to waste a single one on the thoughts of his father and the darkness that followed him around, throwing long shadows of regret over his future.

So he sunk down on his mouth instead and kissed him with passion, longing and devotion he only ever felt for his beautiful redheaded lover and he murmured quietly, enticingly:

“Come on, Ron... You’re a Gryffindor, aren’t you? You can’t possibly be intimidated by the thought of a single woman, who happens to also be my mother... someone, who would never see me hurt. At least give her a chance, babe, listen to her... She’s very clever... and incredibly resourceful, you know... and I’m paying for her services with my future, she won’t dare disappoint me... She knows that in the end, the future of the Malfoy family lies with me... and I’d throw it all away for you, baby, if only you asked it of me...”

The promising, elusive mouth was just too sweet, too mind-boggling and too much of a challenge to resist... Ron flipped the silver-haired Slytherin over in one unexpected motion, eliciting a gasp and a throaty laughter and then he pushed his flushed face straight into that devilish mouth and took the silken damaged lips prisoner...

“We’ll see...” he mumbled, but he knew he had already lost this round. “Let’s see these goods you’re gambling with first... pass a judgement if they're worth the effort and then... we’ll see... god, you taste gorgeous, beautiful...”

And so it was that about a week later a slightly confused Ron Weasley, not entirely sure how he had landed himself in such a situation, found himself apparating to a designated location of which he was previously informed though a piece of parchment his blond lover had inconspicuously slipped into his pocket.

It contained a few lines written in a very polite tone and in the elegant hand of Narcissa Malfoy herself, in which Mr. Weasley was _“kindly invited to spend his Afternoon Tea the following day with a mother of his dear friend who would appreciate an opportunity to become better acquainted”_. The note also detailed the apparition coordinates which, much to Ron’s surprise bordering on awe, lead him to the one of the many secluded, but breath-takingly beautiful residences the Malfoys had scattered about the country.

“Nice,” he mumbled to himself, as he stared into the marble façade, up the majestic windows and down the lush gardens, shining in the first frost. He briefly wondered if the Ministry knew about this place at all – he wouldn’t have put it past the Malfoys to own half of the most prestigious wizarding British real-estate and carefully kept it to themselves! Cunning lot, every last one of them, including his sweet little serpent that so expertly manipulated him into agreeing to this bizarre meeting he could imagine no purpose to.

He was actually relieved that Draco's mother picked a place he had no previous notion about. A meeting in the Malfoy Manor would have made him highly uncomfortable – he had nothing but bad memories of that place - but with too many eyes about it was luckily out of the question, while his Slytherin lover proved out to be reluctant about sharing his private location, their secluded little lovers' nest with his mother – and Ron really couldn't say he was sorry about that. So an unknown territory it was and though it was still part of the Malfoy home-ground, it was not quite as suffocating as the Manor and Ron was not quite as nervous as he might have been.

He dressed up with just a tad more care than usual and on a whim bought a single flower, wrapped up in a glossy silken paper. He wasn't familiar with the customs of the super rich, but he figured he couldn't really go wrong with a narcissus – what else? - his imagination didn’t go further than that. But judging by the appreciative once-over Wheezy threw at him, he didn’t stray too far from his goal to give the impression of casually elegant and polite and after Draco paid him a look that was nothing short of predatory, he might have even felt a bit smug.

But the smugness was very nearly all gone and the anxiety returned with a vengeance when he found himself in front of a majestic and foreboding iron-wrought gate, spelling out “ _impostor_ ” and “ _not wanted_ ” with every intricate curve of the ancient iron bars. Except that – defying all logic – he seemed to have been expected: he had only just placed his hand on the thick chain wrapped around both sides of the gate to keep it secured, when the chain had melted in his hand as if it was made of smoke and he suddenly found himself on the inside of the gate without having made a single step.

“Wicked!” he mumbled to himself, impressed almost against his own will. And before he could even finish the thought an elderly house-elf appeared before him and silently led his way into the dream-like residence. Though smaller than the Malfoy Manor, the house was still more like a palace than an actual house and Ron had to focus not to stare around with his jaw dragging on the floor when his eyes darted left and right at the unfathomable beauty and comfort, accentuated in a small million of discrete details. There were polished marble tiles and plush carpets in abundance, the light reflecting off the crystal chandeliers and priceless china – and with every step Ron made he felt his confidence melting and his doubts return...

What was wrong with Draco to ever look at him twice!? He grew up with all... this, the luxury, the style, the unfathomable prestige – what did he ever hope to gain from him?! Surely he could have afforded to keep a lover more convenient than Ron?! He couldn't give him anything, he had nothing, he _was_ nothing - except Harry's friend, he had always been that and Harry _was_ someone – but did he truly count for something on his own?; did he really have something to give that Draco could see value in? He had nothing but his stupid heart!... – yet the Slytherin seemed to want nothing else. He would look at him, look him straight in the eye, and told him over and over again: _“I want you. I want you, Ron. No one else would do.”_

He'd pant it straight into his mouth when they fucked as if the world was ending; he whispered it into his ear when they were making love, slow and excruciatingly tender until their senses screamed for each other; he mumbled it in a sleepy voice when he lay in his arms happily destroyed, boneless and cuddly like a warm plush animal; he woke him up with these words the first thing in the morning, as if he wanted him to face a new day believing them, he'd whisper them to him in passing in one of the school corridors as if he couldn't go a day without saying them. They've always put a smile on Ron's face as if he was somehow programmed to like it that Draco Malfoy should want him so - and not be shy about it.

It was those words he kept in mind when he finally found himself facing his hostess and taking a place on an expensive velvet sofa appointed to him. It was the memory of Draco whispering those words into his ear this very morning he chose to focus on, when he found himself alone and sitting opposite Draco's mother, suddenly feeling as if he came to fight a war for territory and not drink tea and have an awkward, potentially delicate conversation with his lover's mother.

But Narcissa Malfoy felt his held back temper and his suppressed anxiety and she decided to cut straight to the chase: there was nothing to be gained by keeping her son’s alert-looking redheaded lover hanging in suspense any longer than it was absolutely necessary. Draco might find out and she knew her son well enough to know that he would be... displeased, to say the least. Malfoys were, after all, very protective of their own.

“Thank you very much for coming, Mr. Weasley,” she started politely. “As Draco might have mentioned it, I knew your father once, all those years back at Hogwarts and I'm very pleased to report he had always shown me kindness – and I hope you will permit me to say you seem very much alike, ” she said with a deliberately charming smile and saw his face relax a little.

By gods of old and new, was he ever so handsome up close! Those brilliant blue eyes, deep as the ocean, lit up with tension and focus, the curve of the generous mouth just perfect and looking incredibly soft, the creamy complexion with that peculiar constellation of freckles was impeccable and that hair that seemed to emit light of its own – oh, my! No wonder her poor son was lost! Still, she could not afford to silently revel in the young man's stunning looks; she had a job to do!

“As it is...” she continued with delicate care, “... it was recently brought to my attention that my son and yourself share certain... affection,” she looked him straight into the pretty freckled face as carefully as she dared not to miss the tiniest flicker of emotion. She shouldn't have bothered.

“We love each other,” Ron said curtly and surprisingly enough, as these crude, irrevocable words flooded the room, he was suddenly awash with strange peace as if they indeed held the power to clean him of his insecurity and he could look this cold, well-bred woman straight in the eye.

“I love your son, Madam Malfoy,” he asserted calmly, for once without a feeling he should back off. "Don’t ask me how that came about, I have as little idea as you do. But I do. And I have good reason to believe he loves me, too.”

“I see...” she said slowly, her ice-blue eyes never leaving his face as if this had somehow turned into a battle of wills. “In that case... I have a business proposal for you, Mr. Weasley.”

He stared at her for a long moment, incredulous, as if petrified by the cold weight of her unexpected words – and then the anxiety that was piling up inside of him ever since he had agreed to this travesty of an Afternoon tea, erupted in one searing flare.

“You've got some nerve on you, Madame!” he all but howled at her and by the brief flicker of shock on her stone face he could see she was not used to this kind of treatment – but he was past caring. “If you think I'm going to sell what we've got for your galleons and glitter, lady, you've got another think coming! I won't give him up, you hear me?! I won't - until he asks it of me, because he's the only one who has a right to break this apart, break my heart...”

“Do you have any idea, _any bloody idea at all_ , how it is to have what we share?!” he looked at her sternly, with passion, devotion and all that devastating, heart-breaking love etched into his pretty face. “I don't even have words for this..." His voice almost faded and then turned dreamy: "It feels like bone-deep magic is flowing through every last bit of me - through us, as if we're one – and it is the most majestic magic you can imagine. It just... blossoms inside me when he touches me and it spreads like wild fire and it won't stop until it's coming out of my very skin. I _love_ your son _,_ Madam. Love him.

I've tried not to, you can trust me on that, I almost tore myself apart not to touch him again, because it's all so bloody complicated and we're hurting so many people - but it was all in vain. Your son wouldn't budge once, _not once_ since he recognised this for what it was; his love... it cut through all my arrogance, my cowardice and my blind denial; it is humbling how much he loves me – how could I not let him have my heart?

And I've since done some pretty unforgivable things for him, things I could never imagine doing, things I never thought myself capable of: I lied to my wife – and in the end I even told her the truth and broke my family apart. I came close to losing my Harry over what we have with Draco – and I would have, if Harry wasn’t ten times the man I am. And now... now you'd have me sell this out – for what?!”

He leaned in closer and she could see to the bottom of the impossibly blue eyes and saw clearly how very outraged he was. Gods, was he ever so beautiful when he was fierce! His eyes glittered like sapphires and the determined lit-up face was as gorgeous as it was scary. Her son was, it appeared, a very lucky man.

“You haven't got anything - ” he accentuated in a livid, deep voice, “ _Any.Bloody.Thing_ in return that even comes _close_ to what he gives me! I’ve never felt special nor good enough - how could I, in such an abundance of talented siblings and extraordinary friends I keep around? – and yet, he picked me. The very ordinary, not very talented, under-achieving me. _Me_. With a million faults to boot. Yet he tells me he won’t have anyone else. Because he feels it, he feels just the way I do when we wrap around each other. Love. In all its bone-deep magic. No reason, no rules, just pure magic. All the parts fall into their proper places when we touch, everything that ever got broken, mends. _Love_ , Madame.”

He looked her deeply in the eye and she nearly forgot what she came here to say. There was hurt inside the two blue pools of magic, and anger, to be sure, but there was something else staring back at her as well; an emotion so pure and simple it reflected like a diamond from the child-like soul of a beautiful man in front of her and it had tied her throat shut and left her in awe.

This man knew love in all its over-powering glory, in all its humbling defeat and he was determined to give it to her son and he was cautioning her not to stand in his way. He was majestic in his justified wrath and she remembered how Draco always used to call him Potter’s Knight in shiny armour with no small amount of genuine anger hiding under his sarcasm. He might not have realized it just yet, but this Knight had just bought himself an ally for life.

“He needs me,” the redhead interrupted her scattered thoughts. “He needs me as much as I need him and you should at least _respect_ that if you can’t agree with it. You’re his mother, he bloody adores you! And the worst of it is – he trusts you so; he told me a million fucking times that you've got his best interest at heart and – perhaps it is not in the best interest of the Malfoy family to keep me around, but he _wants_ me around and that should count for something, lady. He's your son! Your only one! Do you even have a heart?! I thought this would happen, I just didn't have a heart to tell him...”

“That...” said Narcissa Malfoy calmly, finally composed enough to speak again, “...would be quite enough, Mr. Weasley. Perhaps you need a moment to come to your senses, yes? And please allow me to _use_ that moment to assure you, that I _never_ meant to ask you to _“sell out”_ the love you so obviously have for my son and which you clearly treasure most admirably.”

When she saw all the blood disappear from his face as he realized his mistake, she continued with a barely perceptible smile in the corner of her mouth – after all, she was far too much a lady to gloat openly:

“I merely wished to present you with a future opportunity that might solve certain... problems you and my son seem to have in organizing your time in a way that would allow you to spend more of it together. I might have found a... solution for that, but it is not an instant one and not something that can be done over night. Of course if you're going to deny me a chance to explain...”

“Oh, bloody hell... I really am a world class idiot, ain’t I?! Sweet Merlin’s Sunday underpants!” Ron moaned miserably and collapsed into himself as if the world had suddenly shrunk down to the volume of his chair. “What a blasted fool of a wizard I am!...Pardon my language, Madame... Oh, bloody hell, he's going to kill me for that! The one chance I have for making a good impression on the one person he thinks the world of - and I throw it away so spectacularly, I might as well be selling tickets for the show with the biggest moron on the planet! No need to worry about this liaison of ours having any future, milady, he's going to break it off himself when he realizes what an oaf I've been! Bloody hell... what a massive fucking disaster!” the young man almost whimpered, his face disappearing into the palms of his hands and if Narcissa wasn't quite as well-bred as she was, she might have let out a giggle at his despair, taking on comical proportions.

She could not remember anyone using such crude language in front of her, ever, and it was strangely invigorating as if the blinds on the windows of her sheltered life were lifted and a bright sunlight of real life came pouring in. _Charming_. The youngest son of Arthur was simply charming in all his unfeigned simplicity and honest rage and she found his singular genuineness incredibly endearing. He was a right darling and even though she could never tell him that, he bought her with those first words of passionate refusal of her assumed stab at the affection they both seemed to hold so very dear.

“Well… considering how very enlightening it was, I wouldn’t call this conversation _entirely_ wasted…” she finally took pity on him and he peaked at her from behind the big palms of his hands, the bright blue eyes suddenly twinkling as if he was given an early Christmas present. _Charming_ , she thought yet again, feeling uncommonly playful and young around him. The young man was terribly… refreshing.

“No?” he asked, sounding half incredulous, half hopeful, and she felt her mouth stretch into a smile almost before she could stop it.

“No, I shouldn’t think so,” she professed. “It gave me a fairly good insight into the… relationships, so to speak, between you and my son and I find myself quite satisfied with the genuineness and depth of your feelings for my darling Draco. Frankly, young man, I was impressed!”

And if she thought that an angry Ron Weasley was a sight to behold, a beaming Ron Weasley almost knocked her of her feet.

“You can’t mean that!” he said almost breathless and his blue eyes were lit up like two sapphire rings with hope and joy. “I behaved like a right fu… idiot… appallingly, as the more civilized people might call it, you can’t just pretend I didn’t say all those awful things!”

“But you’ve also said many charming, perhaps even… _touching_ things about your liaison with my son; things any mother would have to appreciate if her son’s happiness is of any concern to her! And in the end the words are only tools, often over-rated, to express our reasoning and emotions and if your _tools_ might have been a tad… crude for the job, they certainly served to express a most favourable emotion.”

“Are you for real?!” Ron stared at her as if she just fell out of her place in Heaven. “So you’re just going to forget it?! You’re not going to throw me out and hex me in my ar… behind? You’re giving me another chance?”

“Well...” said Narcissa, for some reason unable to quite wipe the smile off her face, “Let’s put it like this: I suggest that we chalk up our misunderstanding and all its… consequences to a certain amount of wrong expectations and perhaps even a poor choice of words on my part, though when you hear me out - hopefully, in a moment – you will see that I hardly had a choice to phrase it differently, it is, in the end, a very business-like matter. Shall we perhaps - start afresh, yes?” she arched her eyebrow to obtain his agreement, but he had quite unexpectedly seized her narrow cold hand and put it between the big palms of his calloused hands.

“Thank you,” he said simply and: “You are every bit as precious as he says you are.”

And his hands were uncommonly warm and very manly in their roughness and his voice was deep and rumbling and… by gods, she might have swooned there just a little!

“Well, yes… yes, of course, you’re welcome,” she said in a soft voice, sincerely, and he realized his rudeness at the same moment and let go of her hand, which was a relief from a standpoint of proper behaviour - but for some reason it felt like a loss from another, more private perspective. Oh, my… The young man was a terrible charmer, completely unaware of his own charisma and she just _knew_ that her poor temperamental son will forever be challenged by this enchanting creature of light and fire!

But she hurried to mask her musings and reminded herself that she had called him here for a reason and that it was about time to find out whether her little plan would be feasible:

“But now... to the business I mentioned, if you please. Firstly, please allow me to pose a question you might find odd and certainly none of my business, but I have to ask you to answer it as truthfully as you can: What are your plans after you complete your NEWTs?”

When she saw the stunned expression on his face she elaborated quickly: “Surely you must have passed a decision to return to school with a certain goal in mind and as I am told that your children are no longer helpless babies, I imagine you won’t be returning to a position of stay-at-home father, but rather engage in developing a career. I should very much like to know what career you had in mind, if you don’t mind sharing.”

“Well, Harry and I were always going to be Aurors,” Ron answered truthfully. “And then my babies happened and the marriage and it all got delayed – but you’re right, of course. My wife persuaded me that it was time for me to start a proper career and Harry ensured me that there will be room for me within the Auror Department. Though now… everything has changed again, hasn’t it?” he looked at her with his big blue eyes and a slight frown on his face told her he had just realized something for the first time.

“Hermione wants to leave me after I will have found a job and even though I can trust her not to be unreasonable about it, there would certainly be more expenses with a separate household and less money to pay for it: Harry always complains how badly underpaid the Aurors are compared to other Ministry officials, but of course, he doesn't really care, he's very well off, while I … bloody hell, I might have to get a second job! I’ve always hated my dad having to pull all those long office hours, we barely ever saw him, and now I’m going to be just like him.”

The depression settled deeply into the blue orbs and Narcissa found no reason to keep him wallowing in his misery.

“What if I told you that there was another option?” she asked softly. She saw his face lift abruptly and his eyes spring onto her face and she couldn’t help but smile at his almost child-like expectation.

“My son is an heir to a grand estate, Mr. Weasley and the last heir to the names of Malfoy and Black. Since the war he had lead a fairly sheltered existence, well within the boundaries of the premises where every possible precaution was taken that no harm should befall him. But I believe you are aware that he had recently passed a decision to embark on a road to extending the family name to future generations - to marry and to sire a child, if I put it plainly. That means he will finally take his position as an upstanding member of the Malfoy family and that, Mr. Weasley, means a lot more social engagements and unforeseen obligations. Quite simply, he cannot afford to live a secluded life any longer and in the case of my son, that brings about considerable complications.

You see - the unfortunate past associations of his father and, as sad as it makes me to admit, myself, have left a dark mark on this family which I am very anxious to remove. Unfortunately, our misguided past dealings provided us all, Draco no less than my husband and I, with an alarming number of... adversaries, perhaps even enemies; individuals who find it hard to face the harsh realities after the war and are eager to seek retribution. In short – there are people out there who wish to harm Draco and I cannot emphasize enough how important it is that this never happens – he must be protected at all cost.”

“I know,” said Ron quietly, his eyes suddenly alert. “There have been incidents… I witnessed one, just one,” he added quickly at the sight of her mortified face. “But one is enough to acknowledge that these fears of yours are no fabrication of your imagination, but sadly, very real. And this was at school – god knows what's in store for him out there! There certainly hasn't been any shortage of weirdos and nuts pouring out of every hole after the war! And that's just crazy people – then there are also the sane but angry ones... but I still don't understand what does any of that have to do with me?”

He continued to stare at her with those big blue inquisitive eyes and she couldn't help but smile graciously at him again:

“You, Mr. Weasley, are a hero in the eyes of a public. We all know what your family went through during the war, the terrible loss and sacrifices you've all made and to this day, your reputation remains untarnished. I hope you will forgive me for saying that your height and built also make you a physically impressive man, who is, at least according to my son, extremely proficient with defensive spells and – extraordinarily enough – wandless magic. But first and foremost – you care for my son. I can see no person more appropriate to be my son's... let's say life-companion, in charge of his safety.”

She watched his pretty face to go from a frown, indicating a complete lack of understanding, to an incredulous recognition when he realized what she was offering and finally, to awed hope.

“You mean like...”

“I believe the Muggles call it _a_ _bodyguard_ , Mr. Weasley,” she explained pleasantly. “Basically, it means that once you complete your education, preferably with top marks in defensive charms, and undergo proper training under the guidance of our most capable prodigy, Mr. Potter – half a year would do, I should think – you would take your position near my son and make sure nothing ever happens to him.

I realize you have a family of your own, therefore 10, perhaps 12 hours a day should be sufficient, yes? I'm sure we can specify the details of your employment later and of course, find alternative solutions to keep my son safe for the rest of his day – I shouldn't worry much about that, actually, he needs almost the entire remaining time of the day for his beauty sleep and eventually he will have a wife and a family to entertain him in the evenings. But during the 12 hours he would be entirely under your care – where ever he goes, he goes with you, is that understood, Mr. Weasley?”

He wasn't able to utter a single word, he just nodded numbly, still staring at her as if he couldn't believe his ears.

“Of course, because your... employment engagement would extend past the usual hours and may, occasionally, stretch into what would otherwise be your time off – by this I mostly have in mind weekend and dinner obligations – you can expect to be properly compensated. I think you will find yourself more than satisfied with the monthly amount I have in mind, Mr. Weasley and perhaps that will be leverage enough to make our dear Mr. Potter understand that a single father simply cannot afford to turn down an offer as generous as this one in favour of remaining by his side as an under-paid Auror.”

“But I promised...” said Ron quietly and a sudden hint of misery tainted his crystal eyes. “I promised Harry I would be with him, by his side, on the job, once I finish school. I can't just...”

“You,” interrupted Narcissa Malfoy, never the one to be deterred in her plans, “will simply have to be creative, Mr. Weasley. Mr. Potter now has a child, yes? I don't think I assume too much if I say that he probably adores him. And your sister, the mother of the child, has a very promising Quidditch career in front of her, isn't that right? Dangerous sport, Quidditch. Now - how hard, do you think, it would be to persuade Harry Potter, the boy who never knew his family, that it would simply be dreadful for his lovely son if something bad was to happen to _both_ of his parents? And with the job as dangerous as his, really, it could just be a matter of time! Wouldn't he be much better off with another job - teaching, for example, I’m informed he’s marvelous at it! – that would put him out of direct line of fire and make sure that his child, perhaps children, always have a father?

 _Nothing_ is cast in stone, Mr. Weasley. Not your future career, not even this offer. You will simply have to make a choice. The way I see it – on one side there is a chance for you to spend nearly every waking moment of yours in the company of my son, in public view, sharing his experiences and his life of privilege _and_ get compensated for it – but you would have to disappoint your best friend with your career choice. Or not even that, if you play smartly. On the other side, there are only occasional short encounters after hours, always covert, always after a dangerous underpaid job with long hours that might put a strain on your family’s resources and further limit the time you spend with your family – but you would get to keep your promise to your best friend, who doesn’t share the same life circumstances with you and cannot possibly understand what it is, you are sacrificing for him. Is there even a choice, Mr. Weasley?”

“You don’t understand… I promised Harry to come and live with him once our children are old enough to depart to Hogwarts,” Ron said quietly, but Narcissa merely smiled.

“That is nearly a decade away, Mr. Weasley, if not more. That is a very long time. Anything can happen. Would you have seen yourself in this position a decade ago? A decorated war hero, father of three, negotiating with the mother of your once-arch enemy the terms of your false employment so you could spend more time with him? A decade, Mr. Weasley. A very long time indeed. But I will need to have your answer on _how_ you wish to spend this decade from you soon. Do you still wish to…”

“No,” Ron cut through her words, finally a smile peaking from the cloud of anxiety rapidly disappearing from his pretty face. “I would be a dreadful fool to decline, wouldn’t I, and over-thinking won’t bring me any closer to a better solution. There _is_ no ideal solution, not for the situation we’re in - Harry wanting me and desperate for a family; your son torn between me and his obligations to take up the place of a proper Malfoy - and myself, soon to be a single father with two lovers I cannot bear to disappoint aside. And here you stand, offering me on a platter a life I could only dream of until now and which would instantly solve most of my problems with only minor complications. And even if it is only for a decade or so – I’d be a right idiot to decline. It is a rather ingenious plan, you know,” he beamed at her admiringly and somehow his simple compliment brought about a rush of blood into her cheeks she couldn’t remember having in a very long time. Charmer, a terrible charmer he was! She’d do good to remember that!

“But what I don’t understand is – how do you plan to sell it to your husband? He’s bound to hate me, I’m a Weasley,” he stated simply, not a shred of doubt in his voice that the old man’s animosity towards the family of his old adversary remained solid even after the war.

She smiled again, but there was a swift flicker in her eyes that suddenly reminded Ron Weasley that this was the woman that literally turned the outcome of war with her bravery and, strangely enough, love.

“I assure you, Mr. Weasley, that I have my means. Lucius might never honestly welcome you in our home, but I will make sure that you’re at least tolerated and not bothered by his foul temper and old grudges while you’re there – and it might not be as much as you fear, Draco is very likely to settle in a home of his own once he has a family. My husband simply needs to learn that the range of his will and wishes has limits – as long as Draco provides for the future of the Malfoy family, he is entitled to his own choices. “Lucius, however…”

She stopped as if she was hesitating, but in the end she decided to speak nevertheless: “My husband would not tolerate your relationship,” she said frankly and saw it came as no surprise. “He would die before he would publicly accept his son having a male lover, more so if that lover is a Weasley. Therefore he must never know. Lucius is very… stiff sometimes, stuck in the world of his childhood standards and beliefs – but he is my husband all the same and I swore by the altar to stand by his side through thick and thin. But that does not bind me to support him in his folly, only to make sure that he does not suffer from it.”

“And what does your son has to say to your cunning little plan?” Ron asked quietly and for some reason his heart beat faster in anticipation of her answer.

“Oh, he doesn’t know,” Narcissa said almost matter-of-factly, shocking him silent and suddenly there was a razor sharp edge to her voice: “And he is not to know. He may betray our delicate plan yet should he ever clash with his father – perhaps you’re unaware of it, but I’m afraid that my son is a proud owner most awful Black temper. Quite infamous trait, I assure you. I swear by Merlin’s golden locks he sometimes reminds me more of my cousin Sirius than of his own father. But perhaps you know of it more than I do – after all, you’ve been on the receiving end of it more often than not, yes?”

She saw his soft mouth stretch in a smile, but before he could distract her with his answer, she hurried to emphasize: “No, he is not to know. You must make sure he does not find out until it is time. If all goes according to our agreement, albeit unspoken, you will be his marriage present. If not...”

She didn't need to finish her thought, Ron had a pretty good idea that there was no deal possible for a single Draco unwilling to produce an heir. It was almost a consolation that her wonderful idea came with a price – she was a Slytherin to the bone and he knew nothing ever came without a price-tag with the slippery serpents – and if there was to be no immediate benefit to her, he would have been forever suspicious, but this way at least he knew what it was that she was asking in return. But one question he could find no answer to, still bothered him and because he had a feeling this meeting was very nearly over, he just blurted it out unannounced:

“How come you don't hate me? How come, you're in favour of this... thing we have?! How come you condone when you know I'm not good enough for him? You should be hexing me to my early grave and here you sit, practically offering me a life with him. That's what I'd like to know...”

“Oh, I never particularly hated or liked you much, Mr. Weasley, but when it comes to my son, it's not so much a case of whether you're good enough for him or not – you're the _only_ one for him and I've seen it with my own eyes. The way he looks at you... Every mother should rejoice if her child develops such longing and finds it echoed in another's heart. And though you may not deem yourself good enough, Mr. Weasley, I dare say that from that perspective, you're the very best – and that's exactly what my son deserves.”

“Ron,” he said quietly, uncommonly moved. “Mr. Weasley is my father, I'm Ron for friends and family.”

“Well, _Ronald_ ,” she emphasized politely, but kindly as she got up to indicate that this meeting came to an end. “I believe we have reached an agreement. I shan't waste any more of your precious time. Next time we see each other I believe the circumstances might be very different, so please permit me to say that it was my absolute pleasure to meet you and... see you in your element,” she could not stifle a small smile in the corner of her mouth when she saw an honest blush creeping up his neck.

“Yeah, well... uhm, sorry about that,” Ron managed with a sheepish grin and somehow her hint of a smile became a fully-blown smile that lit up her face and made her look younger, more girlish than lady-like and a lot more alike her son.

“You should smile more,” Ron blurted out and unexpectedly caught her hand without her permission and sandwiched it between his big warm palms, startling her breathless.

“You look so much like him when you do,” he stared down into her ice blue eyes with a brilliance of his own. “He may not have your looks, but he has your beauty, Madam.”

“Narcissa,” she spoke before her brain caught up with her and for some reason she longed to hear him say it, if only once, while her eyes were still glued on the pretty face with features so strangely familiar, like a distant, welcome echo from her youth.

“Narcissa,” he repeated and then added almost sadly: “I can never call you like that... Madam Malfoy.”

“Shhh...” she told him and somehow her finger found a way onto that soft mouth to stop him from dissolving an illusion. “Never is a very long time, Ronald.”

~

“Don't you ever... _ever_... keep me hanging on for so long, Ronald Weasley!”

The blond Slytherin practically launched himself at his lover as soon as he stepped over the threshold of what they got used to calling “their place”.

“Never... ever...” he managed between a shower of hungry, desperate kisses aimed at the pretty soft mouth of his slightly stunned-looking lover and only when he felt them returned with the same fervour, every bit intense and wonderfully dedicated, growing deeper and longer with no honest attempt to stop and fetch air – only then did he felt the insecurity that was making him breathless ever since he left slowly melt out of his body, leaving him drained. As oblivious as the redhead usually was, he somehow sensed his anxiety and closed his mouth with one last beautifully overwhelming kiss that left the blond slightly disoriented and with soft knees and then he felt his cheek press against the massive chest. Only when he closed his eyes to the sound of his heart-beat he felt as if he could breathe again.

Ron held him for the longest time without saying a thing, letting him bathe in his warmth, in his looming presence, wrapped so protectively around him, in that special “Ron” scent that always filled him with an equal measure of peace and yearning.

“Hey,” he finally said in a soft voice as if he didn't want to chase away the feeling of closeness binding them into one. “I'm still here, you know. One piece, see? No missing limbs, no scars. All yours, babe.”

“She could have hurt you, she could have... Merlin, there was a million ways in which this could have gone wrong and I only became aware of them all _after_ you left,” Draco admitted in a shaky voice and the strong warm hand on his back, pressing him deeply into Ron's personal space, seemed to be the only thing still holding him together. He knew it was his idea – but ultimately, it wasn't, it was hers – he knew he made him go, practically forced him, and the very thought of how badly this could have turned out made him sick to the stomach.

He kept on hearing her voice “ _I am talking about Ron Weasley ending up on your doorsteps in body bags, a fair number of them_ ” and he prayed to all the gods he could think of, wizarding and Muggle alike, that he had read his mother right and that Ron would return to him safe and none the worse for wear, but as the moments just kept ticking away – endless, countless moments – the more agitated and restless he grew. He could not imagine what such two utterly different people would have to say to one another for half an hour... an hour... an hour and a half... almost two - until he had almost driven himself mad with all the contradicting ideas - horrible to the bone, every last one of them – and he had passed a decision to go looking for him, be what it may even if it meant exposing their quiet, forbidden love to the harsh eyes of the unforgiving world.

Ron's return had caught him mid-step to the closet where he kept his coat and his relief burst out of him in one giant surge of need and love he had no control over and could not hold back. He was here; by God in Heaven and Merlin's hairy chest, he was here, finally here, and he seemed unharmed and smiling softly as if the encounter wasn't entirely unpleasant and while he had died a thousand deaths, Ron clearly hasn't and everything was going to be alright, he just needed a moment and another... and another two, possibly an eternity in his arms. He was back, everything was going to be alright after all.

He couldn't tell him that, he couldn't share that much of himself as he barely kept himself sane and together so he asked quickly before his precious control slipped and he would melt into a puddle of nerves and sobbing in the warm embrace of his lover:

“So... how did it go?”

“I blundered,” Ron admitted and Draco's heart might have skipped a beat... and picked up its pace as he realized that he was still here, unharmed, so whatever he had said or done, must not have been so bad, or was duly forgiven.

“I misunderstood something she said... about us and I took it the wrong way and I told her off and...”

A sharp gasp made his way out of Draco's chest at last as if it wouldn't be kept back at such an abomination as “ _telling Narcissa Malfoy off_ ” and, incredibly enough, living to tell the tale.

“Sweet Merlin... you told my mother off?! What are you, Weasley, mad _and_ immortal!? Or just plain mad?! I can't imagine my mother...”

“Oh, but she was extremely cool about it... extremely cool,” Ron said quickly, trying to manoeuvre around what had actually been said. “She just really, genuinely seems to be on our side... providing that you keep your part of the bargain.” After a suspicious look from the astute grey eyes he knew he had to give him something, throw him a bone that will make him forget that there even was a misunderstanding, so he blurted out the first thing that came to his mind:

“She's very pretty when she smiles.”

Draco's eyes first grew to the sizes of the galleons and then narrowed to slits when he inquired in a voice filled with incredulity:

“When she smiles?! You made my mother smile?! How...!? What for?! How?!”

And incredibly enough, he found himself flushed with jealousy. He had sent him there in a way of a peace offer, to meet her demands, to show his willingness to cooperate, he had been mad with worry - and that insolent, cheeky redheaded bastard had all the while fought and flirted and... god knows what else with his mother and whatever he did, he did it well enough to make her smile at him! Was there no limit to his “fuck all” attitude?! One does not simply go and make Narcissa Malfoy smile at them! It's just... not done. His mother didn't smile at people she just met randomly! She shot them cold, polite twists of mouth that could barely pass for a smile, she would often smirk at them or nod with a barely concealed boredom or despisal – but she never, ever truly smiled. Or very rarely. Her smile was exclusive for the members of her small family and somehow, unbelievably, Ron had made her smile! How on Merlin's crazy Earth...

“I told her she looks like you, when she smiles,” a low enticing murmur cut through his thoughts and his mind went instantly blank. Oh. _Oh_.

“I told her she should smile more and that you have her beauty. I told her everything I could think of to make her not think me a complete and utter fool, unfit for her son, the one I'm crazy about, and for some reason that seemed to be a way to her heart. I told her to call me Ron, but she called me Ronald and somehow I found it incredibly sexy...”

“You bastard...” Draco breathed out his defeat when the treacherous heavenly mouth began caressing the sensitive skin just under his ear-lobe with a shower of tiny butterfly kisses and small wanton licks and he could no longer pretend his body wasn't exploding in a fireworks of desire in a thousand places at the same time. “You'll pay for that...”

“Make me... make me pay...” his redheaded devil whispered straight into his ear with hot moist breath and just like that, their world righted itself once again.

~

For a while there, Narcissa Malfoy simply sat in her chair as if petrified. She didn't know what had gotten into her, but there was something about that Weasley boy - Ronald, she corrected herself – that made her let go of her natural defences, provided by years of stiff upbringing and hard-wired manners. He was just so... _alive_ , wasn't he? One moment he exploded and shouted at her – _shouted_ ! - like no one has done since she had been a child – and the next he was adorable and almost … cuddly... like a giant exotic cat that just wants to roll in your lap and sleep. And then there were those unfathomable blue eyes, just like Arthur's and that blinding heart-stopping smile that she would undoubtedly called sexy... if such a word existed in her vocabulary. Merlin, was he ever so... _confusing_! No wonder her son lost most of his marbles over him!

But at least now she understood, clearly and without a shred of a doubt, what it was that Draco saw – of sensed - in him – and never even knew. Narcissa had a rare gift of seeing people's magic – she had it even as a child and only ever confided to one person of it, Bella, who immediately went on to pronounce her mad and Narcissa took it as a lesson harshly-learned and never spoke to another soul about it, but often used it at her advantage.

Wizarding folk with poor magical skill had a very faint glow about them, barely a trace of what distinguished them from the Muggles, but powerful wizards and witches were nearly all engulfed in a cloud of colour her eyes, when focused on the task, could see. Voldemort was covered in smoky black, barely the slits of his eyes showing and Bella had been the coldest shade of purple, the very colour of mourning, frosty skies and searing pain. Dumbledore had been majestic deep crimson and Harry Potter, the mightiest of them all, was the only wizard Narcissa had ever seen with shifting colours, going from the flaming orange to the most beautiful emerald green and everything in between. His colours were so saturating it almost hurt. And while Lucius had been ice blue, matching her own aquamarine quite well – the sight that never failed to please her - their son had never even been close to any of them.

She could barely name his magic with a colour; it was so sparkling silver, she could barely detect that, in fact, it had a solid golden tinge underneath – and she always assumed that the way she saw it was somehow affected by her motherly love. Until she saw the magic of Ronald Weasley with his glittering soft gold stretching behind and around him like soft wings and the sparkling silver that covered it like frost was a perfect match for her son. To her eyes they looked like two sides of the same fabric of magic, each with only a slightly prevalent shading of their own, but undoubtedly the same. And Narcissa would be every last knut she owned that when were together, their magic merged into one. They were made for each other.

And somehow that thought got her moving. She was about to do the unforgivable, match her son to someone other than Ronald Weasley, but it needed to be done if there was to be a future for the Malfoy family. And once it was done and the future heir for the family of Malfoy and Black had been secured, she would do everything in her power to see their splendid magic merge again. One did not just go and break a beautiful gift from gods like this apart.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Erm... I don't really have an excuse, alright? :)There's probably someone out there thinking: "Dear god, it took her 3 weeks to show up with this... garbage?!" - But yes, it did and I know it's a far cry from perfect or even from something I initially wanted to write, I opted to continue and give this story a proper wrap-up, no loose ends. I'll try to do some small writing projects in between, so I can have my brain have a rest (anyone up to the annual Ron/Draco fest on Live Journal? Hm... *is tempted*) and see where I can still take it (but that's what I'm probably doing if it takes me uncommonly long to update). It's already waaaay too long, but... no buts, I don't have an excuse. :)  
> Don't be too angry at me, it's just a story, not the meaning of life, no need to pay attention. ;)  
> Oh, the unofficial translation to the Rammstein's German lyrics can be found at: http://herzeleid.com/en/lyrics/reise_reise/amour


	46. Veni, vidi, vici

_"Holy water cannot help you now_  
 _Thousand armies couldn't keep me out_  
 _I don't want your money_  
 _I don't want your crown_  
 _See I've come to burn your kingdom down..."_

Seven devils, Florence and the Machines

 

“You want _whom_ to watch over our son?!”

The morning of Lucius Malfoy, so far, had been filled with one shock after another, each of them more unpleasant than the one before. He had no notion of this when he got up into a stunning sunset in the month of July and found life to be good yet again. After all, his only son was getting married to a beautiful bride from a highly appropriate family – only the girls from the Sacred Twenty-eight qualified, Narcissa had discretely made sure of that through the invitations to balls and receptions they had been vigorously engaging Draco in – and though it had taken six weekly events for Draco to begrudgingly narrow the choices between “ _never, intolerable, I'd rather marry that oaf Hagrid_ ” and “ _perhaps... if you put me under Imperio_ ” and half a dozen more to become engaged to a graceful beauty by the name of Astoria Greengrass – tomorrow was _The Day_ and his family line would be one important step closer to obtaining an heir.

Honestly, their rueful son had been beyond difficult, disinterested and irritable, but somehow Narcissa had over night developed a patience of a Saint and she just kept on pushing forever new eligible candidates his way, until one day he simply sighed in surrender and pointed across the room at a girl who just entered and whom he had yet to meet: “That one... just... let's pick that one and have it over with. It has to be one, obviously, so that one is as good as any. She's pretty. And she hasn't had a chance to spoil the impression yet.”

As it turned out, the girl he so randomly chose to share his life with, Astoria, was a younger, more timid and likeable sister of Draco's Slytherin contemporary Daphne Greengrass, one of the fiercest of candidates, who had turned a nasty shade of green after he put on the most charming of his faces with determination born out of despair and floated across the room to greet her beautiful, shy sister. He wouldn't dance with any other that evening and to anyone who didn't know him intimately, his laughter sounded hearty. But even Lucius could tell it was off, strangely hollow and put-on, but he simply didn't care. Things were finally moving in the right direction and he wasn't about to let his son's negligible eccentricity stand in the way of everything good and proper.

Narcissa, however, was more dutifully concerned and when she discretely inquired about his opinion on the “ _lovely girl_ ” that was the centre of his attention a night before, she got another disinterested reply: “Not as dumb as some. Obviously well-bred, properly mannered... and fairly decent to look at. She might even be too good for what I've got to offer, actually.”

After the appalled look Lucius had shot him across the room at a preposterous idea that someone should be “ _too good_ ” for a Malfoy, Draco merely broke an evil smirk and commented: “Just a healthy jest, Father. Like my future marriage.”

And he excused himself from the table as if he had entirely lost his appetite. It did leave a sour taste in Lucius's mouth, truth be spoken, but he was not disheartened. It only took four more social events until the engagement was publicly announced and the date was set, and even though Draco's enthusiasm for his future marriage was yet to make an appearance, Lucius was certain that hardly anything could go wrong at this point. After all, his capable wife was supervising the procedures, and she wouldn't allow anything to go awry. Lucius pitied the poor bastard or the imbecile calamity that dared stand in his wife's way, when she wanted something.

And right now, she wanted something and _he_ was on the receiving end of it, hardly able to believe his ears. The conversation had started pleasantly enough, but had quickly taken a turn for the worse.

“Good morning, darling,” she greeted him with the usual peck on the cheek and watched him – like a bird-of-prey would its target, he recalled later – getting comfortably seated.

After a casual “ _Would you care to pass the butter, dear?_ ” she continued a conversation in a chirping tone: “Excited about tomorrow, I trust?”

After a “ _hmph_ ” from Lucius who just bit into a hefty piece of Brie and could not hope to continue without embarrassing himself, she carried on without waiting for his answer: “I imagine all the details have been taken care of – or will have been by tomorrow – there is just a small matter of our son's security as I'm sure you're familiar with the fact that he had been _attacked_ at school last year and precautions must be taken...”

And Lucius had almost choked dead on his cheese. _Attacked_?! At that sorry excuse for a school?! No, he wasn't familiar with it; no one had _bothered_ to familiarize him with it!! He was so going to have a talk with that old hag McGonagall about it, how _dare_ she keep it from him! And, oh, Merlin's beard, how bad was it!? And how come his stupid son never spoke?! This could have been dangerous, it could have been just part of a bigger plot – how was it that he was _always the last_ to find out about these things?!

He swallowed as big a piece of Brie as he could manage and finally opened his mouth for an outraged reply, when his wife continued as calmly as if the news was common gossip:

“My source – and it is a reliable one, be certain of that – informed me it was not a very serious attempt, hardly more than a few frustrated adolescents taking our son's superiority and academic excellence as a personal offence... but though Draco defended himself with admirable proficiency, it still made me ponder upon what else is out there for him... and now, when he's about to take his proper place as a member of the Malfoy family and his social engagements and obligations will increase exponentially – perhaps it's time to consider a more permanent solution. I hope I have your consent on that, but I've already taken certain steps in that direction...”

She looked at him with her astute eyes under an arched eye-brow, waiting with perfunctory politeness for his agreement as it was clearly expected, and he suddenly remembered why he married this exceptional woman – and why she still scared him a tiny bit after all this time.

“If we must...” he begrudgingly approved, not really aware to what he was agreeing to, but hoping to find out; and it had earned him a relaxing smile that should have been his first sign that his wife was up to more than she was letting on.

“Marvellous,” she smiled coolly and then continued in her pleasant, matter-of-fact tone: “I have thought of it very carefully and I have reached the following conclusion: as this person would have to practically breathe the same air with Draco during all of his waking hours, it is of essential importance that a bond of trust is established between them. And in my educated opinion, there is just one man that seems to suit the position I have in mind - but before we discuss it, please consider that this type of closeness calls for someone unbribable, with unblemished reputation and possibly impressive physique...”

“Oh, good,” Lucius interrupted her with a mean smirk. “For a while there I was afraid we were talking about Potter, but the “ _impressive physique_ ” part cleared that up...”

“No, not Potter, don't be ridiculous,” Narcissa waved the proposal away as if it was a preposterous one. “I was thinking more in the direction of his right-wing man, the Weasley boy, Ronald, I'm sure you remember him...”

Her last words died in a fit of coughing that came across Lucius the second the blasphemous “W” word was mentioned as he tried to simultaneously get rid of the food in his mouth as fast as he could and furiously object. Narcissa waited patiently for his coughing fit to pass, clearly prepared for this kind of interruption, but when he was turning a deeper shade of magenta by the moment, she sighed in exasperation and calmly spoke:

“ _Evanesco! …_ There, all better. Would you like a glass of water with all that fury?”

“You... have you gone _utterly mad_ , woman!? You want _whom_ to watch over our son?!”

“Oh, I thought I've said it loud and clear, I apologize, my fault entirely. Ronald Weasley, a decorated war hero, the one person who's _not_ Potter but as good as, and that very boy who had already helped save Draco's life under very grave circumstances - twice. Someone who's far too honourable to ever betray anyone he had pledged to protect, a magnificently tall and physically fit Ronald Billius Weasley, who just happened to have recently finished his schooling with the generation's top grades in Defensive Charms and is currently on the market for employment that matches his skills, which include a fabulous talent for wandless magic. A pureblood through and through, a son of Arthur Weasley, the _Deputy Minister of Magic_ Arthur Weasley, Lucius - do I really need to say more?!”

“But... he’s a blood traitor, they all are!” he tried haplessly, perfectly stunned by the sheer force of an attack - she had even raised her voice, for Merlin's sake, and that had only happened perhaps half a dozen times throughout their long marriage! But she wouldn't let him get a gasp of fresh air and clear thought:

“Are you really going to waste a possibility to secure a magnificent protector like that for your son, Lucius Malfoy, on account of your misplaced hostility for everyone named Weasley?!” she hissed and somehow her cold voice managed to sound outraged and full of contempt. “He might be Arthur’s son, but he is _not_ Arthur and whatever the history between you and Weasley Senior, you have no grounds to hate his son other than he was born to a father he didn’t choose!

I had thought you better than that, more... reasonable, capable of cool, measured judgement to provide what just happens to be the very best for your son in terms of his security. The man is one of the Holy Trinity, for goodness' sake, Lucius, you'd be sucking up to Potter and slapping him in the face in one go! He's got unblemished reputation as required, is fully capable to do the job and as much as you hate the Weasleys – they are one tightly knit family with their tentacles in every corner of our society and would stand up for their own as one, in a heartbeat.

We are presented with a very unique chance at the moment, I have it on a very reliable source that he's currently not engaged anywhere else yet, and has been eyeing the career of personal safety and security, but our time-slot for action is narrow at best. We can't let a man like that be snatched off the market by the Aurors! Merlin, would he _ever_ be terribly wasted there - and I'm telling you,  Lucius Malfoy - I won't have it! This is too good an opportunity!”

Her voice was so adamant and stern that he was instantly reminded that this was the daughter of the haughty and unscrupulous Druella Black who pursued her goals in life with murderous obstinacy and had either things run her way or sought to destroy them. Once Andromeda Tonks, neé Black, married a Muggle-born wizard Ted Tonks out of love and eloped, no one was a greater danger to her than her own mother, everybody knew that. And one just does not stand in the way of someone like that, it is not... _healthy_ , Lucius soon learned in a handful of their more vicious rows.

The scars she gave him after he had taken young Draco to the dungeons and left him there for the night as a means of punishment, still ached and burned sometimes and he secretly suspected that might be her doing. He always thought Bellatrix was the one to have inherited her mother's madness, but for all he knew, there might have been a hint of it hiding at the bottom of those cold blue eyes. He had to sleep next to the woman, for Merlin's sake, and as she stared at him, perfectly composed, yet so obviously, royally furious, that was a most disconcerting thought.

“But how do you know the Weasley boy will accept the offer, even if one was presented?” he tried to mask his imminent surrender by questioning her logic, but she merely shrugged.

“We must try,” she said curtly and Lucius knew that the fate of the Weasley boy was as good as sealed. No one has ever managed to stop his wife from getting what she wanted, most people simply weren't up to her refined methods and resourcefulness.

“Do I have your approval, then?” she demanded and though her voice was still very even, there was a too-casual tone to it, that made his hair stand on end. She wanted this just a tad too much and it made him alert and it drove him to think there was more to the story than she was sharing.

“And if I say no?” he inquired quietly and was surprised to see a malicious glitter in her eyes, before she gave a cold dismissive smirk and answered:

“In that case I am personally calling the wedding off and you'll have no one else to blame but yourself, Lucius Malfoy.”

At the sharp gasp of incredulous outrage and an unfinished “You wouldn’t _dare_...”  she looked him straight in the eyes and spoke coldly: “Watch me. No one will consider pursuing the ceremony without the groom’s mother present, least of all the groom. There will be nearly 300 people out there for the reception tomorrow, not all of whom we know well – some invitations were issued merely because good manners and etiquette require it – and I am not submitting my only son to that sort of danger!

I have every intention of speaking to Ronald Weasley today and should I succeed, he will be positioned near our son at the altar tomorrow, very discretely, but present and alert, or I'm postponing the whole thing, so help me God! I need more time to find another appropriate person. We'll have a winter wedding, then. I'm sure the bride and her parents will be understanding when I explain,” she said almost matter-of-factly and she might as well has closed her cold claw-like hand around Lucius's neck and squeezed the breath out of him. She had him cornered and she knew it.

“But why him...?!” Lucius couldn’t fathom and the whole idea of a Weasley in his house for any extended length of time was making him miserable enough to keep on fighting the battle he had already lost. “Why not the second best in the year, there must be someone who’s hardly behind...! Or an established professional, I’m fairly certain our coin can buy the best services on the market! Does it have to be...”

“Haven’t you heard the word of what I had said?!” she cut him short yet again as if her patience was running low. “For Draco to tolerate someone around him at practically all times, there needs to be a bond of trust established. You know how he gets, if we were to hang him with a random person who’d get on his nerves, he’d be the one doing the murdering, your son has very low patience reserves when it comes to idiots! But if you need further assurances... Who, do you think, came to his help when he was being harassed last year? Precisely - the one person who already saved his life once - Ronald Weasley, none other. In spite of the family feud.

 _The boy_ , as you insist on calling him, is clearly capable and willing. And there is an old saying that once you save someone's life, you're responsible for it – perhaps that's why he's done it in the first place. I’m not entirely familiar how things stand between them since the war, but I intend to find out more from the conversation with Ronald himself later this afternoon. Though I rather hope that their relationship, if not exactly friendly, is amiable enough to foster a professional cooperation. I don’t need them to be friends, I need to keep my son safe!” she lied without blinking and immediately went to push some more into a crumbling wall of Lucius's defiance.

“So... do I have your agreement?” she spelled out carefully as if talking to a slow child. “I do care to have it, I will not be sabotaged later on, you know! I fully expect you to be civil to the young man, if he is hired. I will _not_ have him quit on behalf of you, Lucius Malfoy, Merlin knows it will be hard enough to persuade Draco he needs a shadow...”

More blatant lies, but since the day of the Dark Lord keeping them little better than hostages in their own home, Narcissa Malfoy was a professional at deceit. It had saved her life, possibly all their lives back then and she was hoping to save her son's life from utter misery now. Lucius deserved no better from being an obstinate old bat when it came to sticking to tradition. She could understand where he was coming from, she shared his concerns, after all her own line had died out recently with no one left to bear the honourable name of Black, but she was also determined to see Draco happy, with or without his father's consent. They've put him through enough with their reckless meddling with the power-hungry murderous maniac; her lovely boy more than deserved his take at happiness, she owed him that much.

She saw the signs of the internal struggle reflect on her husband's face and she decided to wait – she had more arsenal left in her barracks in case he was going to prove unbreakable at first strike, but when she saw him press his lips and look angrily at the wall, she knew she had won with a knock-out.

“Fine,” he could barely make himself to muster. “Do as you must. I certainly hope our son has pride enough left to reject this... insane idea of yours!” he barked and she barely swallowed her own fit of nervous laughter. Her poor, poor deluded husband; living happily in his own outdated bubble of good-manners and family pride. How sorely was he to be disappointed! Still, she couldn't afford to gloat and she had no inclination to. She loved him after all.

“Of course,” she said gracefully enough. “In the end the decision will be down to Draco.”

Lucius never stood a chance against them working hand in hand.


	47. One perfect day

“ _... Sorrow, keeping me sane_  
 _You turn my nights into days_  
 _I love your beautiful anger_  
  
 _When I am tempted to give up_  
 _And the winter’s drowning me with memories and loss_  
 _I leave my hungry mind outside_  
 _‘cause there’s a beauty inside_  
 _And sorrow is fuelling my fire...”_

IAMX, Sorrow

 

“Do not despair...”

Draco’s shoulders slumped as if all the weight of the world was dumped onto them when he heard those words spoken - and by his mother of all people! She had come in a little earlier to give him a hand with the last of details, before he was to walk down the aisle, but no amount of grooming could fix what was wrong with him. How could she say that to him? How could she hope to evaporate his misery by the words of encouragement, while he was getting ready to attend the funeral of every dream he’s ever had?!

He didn’t want this wedding, he _hated_ himself for agreeing to it – and yet he knew he had no choice. He knew it wasn’t exclusively her fault that he found himself cornered and with nowhere to go, but she couldn’t possibly understand... He was about to marry a person who meant nothing and whom he could never hope to make happy and all he could think about was how very different this day could have been if it was his beloved redhead waiting for him at the other side of this door.

His heart felt about a ton heavy and he felt numb all over, as if he was a million years old, but for some reason his hands were shaking so badly, he could barely mask them. And yet there was no disguising his pale stormy face with eyes huge and silver and full of despair. He looked _ill_. It was his wedding day and he looked ill and he had never felt so very trapped and out of place. He couldn’t hope to be civil if he spoke, so he just closed his eyes and wished this day was already behind him. Behind the closed eye-lids he could see the pretty freckled face, and those soft, blue eyes he loved so seemed to glow at him from the darkness and he felt like sobbing as screaming bloody murder at the same time. He would kill to have him near right now, to slip into his big, warm embrace and hide from the world. He could barely tolerate his mother’s touch, her long elegant fingers currently busy plaiting his hair, and he had to bite his lip not to shout at her to leave him be, to stop making him less dishevelled than he felt, because it didn’t fucking matter if he was a bloody perfection on the outside when he felt like a savage ruin, all chaos and debris on the inside.

He squeezed his eyes together tightly not to lose the priceless vision and he thought of _him_ to make it through those unbearable moments; thought of the one perfect day they got to have a few days ago...

The preparations of his wedding were looming above him like a shade of gallows ever since it was announced and he felt the day of his wedding approaching with ominous speed. He literally felt sick to his stomach every time he thought that he would have to share his bed with a stranger soon; that his time will no longer be his own; that his life would be forfeit to a person that wasn’t Ron.

On the last day of school those thoughts were buzzing in his head like a swarm of bees, because this was the last day he got to see Ron without having to ask for it and the thought of the random and insecure nature of their future meetings was driving him up the fucking wall. Around him people were rejoicing, finally free of the burden of NEWTs and in happy expectation of the one completely care-free summer in front of them, while all he could think about was that he’ll get up the next day and there would be no Ron and he would not be able to tell when they would see each other next. Every time his eyes glanced into his direction – only all the bloody time! - he felt as if his own heart was choking him in his throat and he had to force himself to look away and his fingers gripped the table in front of him viciously to keep him in place and not to allow him to fly towards his beautiful lover and confess how very anxious and desperate he was.

But the glow of the lustrous red hair and the deep rumbling laughter kept on pulling his eyes towards the magnificent man like an irresistible magnet until he just gave up the pretence and was bloody staring, dying inside, desperate for their eyes to meet, hoping against hope to communicate to him somehow how badly he needed to talk to him, how very much he needed a few moments alone with him... It was nothing but a second’s glimpse, but he saw the blue eyes flash in his direction and a moment later the redhead got up from the table.

“Sorry, ladies and gentlemen,” he excused himself matter-of-factly. “I think I need to shake some of the weight I gained after the mighty fine fest McGonagall treated us to. If anyone asks for me, I’ll be at your local bathroom.”

Against the outburst of laughter by his faithful followers he walked right past Draco’s table without ever looking at him, but in a most casual gesture he let his fingers brush against the pile of his books as if he was trying to collect dust. It looked like nothing, but the blond knew what it was: an invitation to come and follow him as soon as it was safe. Finally, at long bloody last, he didn’t think he could have kept his anxiety to himself much longer! Any time now... the fools around Weasley’s table were slowly scattering and... soon.

Soon he’d be able to slip out without anyone noticing and if there was one blessing to this cursed day, it was that Potter had already come in early to congratulate them and gone home soon after to attend to a sick child, but not before slipping a hopeful “ _Saturday, dinner at my place, yeah?_ ” to Ron and paying Draco a dark look that was nothing short of suspicious and foreboding. But his words had twisted Draco’s stomach more than his look did; he was done worrying what Harry Potter might have done to him if he had only allowed himself to find out... But he knew very well what _those words_ had meant and he felt faint at the thought that the green-eyed prodigy would continue to have unlimited access to his best mate-gone-lover, while his meetings with Ron were going to be reduced to chance, flippant encounters with a constant threat of a disaster of being seen together looming over their heads.

He had been a mess ever since Potter left - any longer and he might have crumbled – and god knows how very much on edge he must have looked for Ron to notice and to give him a chance. Very much, it seemed, because the redhead had him in his arms before the door to the bathroom was even properly shot and warded.

“Hey...” was all he said in his warm comforting voice and that simple word was everything Draco ever needed to hear. As he buried himself into his wonderfully hot embrace, inhaled his delicious smell like an addict and felt his own shoulders slump against the large hand, slipping onto his back, massaging his tensed muscles and anchoring him safely, that word was “ _come, let me make you feel better_ ”, “ _I care_ ”, “ _I miss you, too_ ”, “ _let me hold you close_ ”, “ _I won’t let you go_ ”. All that and more, in just one word. Said in Ron’s voice, it was Draco’s salvation. As he felt all the tension slowly melt out of his body with the soothing strokes of his comforting, warm hand, leaving him almost limp with release, he felt the reality losing its edge and blurted out his insecurity before he would miss the blessed, precious moment of half-haze:

“I’m getting married in four days... I can’t lose you... I’m a mess... I miss you already... I need _us_ to work... I won’t see you every day... She’ll be there... and you won’t and...”

Something that came dangerously close to a sob constricted his throat viciously and he felt himself shiver under a weight of the words that just wouldn’t come out; words of frustration and fury at his pre-ordained fate and the cards he got dealt in the game of life; words of anxiety and numbing fear that he would lose _them_ , lose him, lose the only thing that mattered; quiet confessions of love and gratitude that he came to his rescue once again; silent hopes of promises that they would never grow apart – the very words he was so desperate to hear. But he couldn’t say any of it; he was choking on an overload of his own mounting emotions until he was breathless and numb and scared of his own helplessness.

And then he felt the fingers of his lover's hand slip gently under his chin and his face was tilted upwards- and as the silken, fresh mouth touched his chapped, scorching lips, he closed his eyes to lose himself in the absolving sensation entirely and melt into the only reality where he felt alive and the very breathing didn’t hurt. Small, almost chaste butterfly kisses painted his lips with a wet varnish until he surrendered to the soft mouth completely and when they had stopped after a lingering last kiss, he opened his eyes and found those mesmerising blue eyes watching him from up close, stopping the very breath in his chest, entrancing him like a believer in reverence, and the redhead whispered in a feverish voice: 

“Run away with me... just for today... it’ll be our game... we can't disapparate, I've personally fixed the wards, but Hagrid's gone and we can use his fireplace to Floo... I’ll go first and I want you to follow... our place... I want you all to myself... just this one day... I want to be with you... one last time... before it’s too late...”

And Draco knew there was going to be a celebration at the end of school later, that they were going to have drinks and get sloshed and that their absence would be noticed and that a mountain of question would be raised and whatnot hell to pay later, but –

“Yes,” he breathed and everything else disappeared, when the strong fingers dug into his hair and Ron kissed him brutally, the way that made him burst with raw life and go from nearly ruined to insanely happy in a flash.

And Ron was already there when he stumbled out of the fireplace a cursed, too-long hour later. His magnificent body, sprawled across the bed, was gloriously naked – and he smiled one of his dark predatory smiles when he saw Draco's breath hitch. The blond launched himself at the delicious offering on the bed, just for him, ignoring the fact that he was still disoriented from Flooing and covered in soot, but he never made it past Ron's long, suddenly outstretched arm.

“Oh, no you don't, beautiful,” the redhead said in a low, dangerous voice. “You're mine for the day... we've got all the time in the world today... and if you make it good for me, who knows... maybe I'll stay the night...”

The adept fingers unexpectedly wrapped around his tie and pulled him closer and the kiss that took Draco's breath away was everything the dishevelled blond needed it to be; it was hard, possessive and it spelled out “ _mine, all mine_ ”, just the way he needed to feel. But just as quickly as he was pulled closer, he was pushed away gently and the redhead smiled enticingly like a cat licking cream at his whimper.

“I said not so fast, precious... Make it good for me, make it slow... take your clothes off, gorgeous... slowly... let me have a good look at you, you know how much I love your divine, sculpted body... love looking at you getting revealed... god, you're perfect... sometimes I think of you at night, when she's sleeps and I'm all needy and bothered... I think of you undressing... slowly... just for me... my private little show... just like now... your elegant fingers undoing the tiny buttons, that flawless marble skin shining through the opening shirt... the hint of your pink nubs pressing against the silken fabric and I know I could colour them dark with my tongue... and my teeth... if only I was given access... Merlin, you have no idea how hard you make me when I think of you, playing with yourself in front of me, shedding your outer skin, my magical silver serpent, getting hard just for me...”

“Ron...” the blond whispered helplessly, because he was already rock hard from watching the large hand, the one he needed on himself, wrap around that fat, heavy cock and starting the slow, torturous journey towards the swollen purple head... and down again... and it was driving him crazy that he was not allowed to touch...

“Just a little longer,” whispered the redhead feverishly. “Just a moment longer... let me enjoy this perfection just a bit more... god, you're a vision... no one should ever see you like this, but me... I don't want to share you, I don't want anyone touching you, I'll break their fucking arms... you make me so, _so_ selfish, my beautiful blond god... I could come into the fucking sky just picturing you getting naked... bit by bit... just for me... Merlin, have mercy, you're hard already... just... don't move... don't touch yourself, love, I'm coming to get you...”

Standing at the bottom of the bed, finally naked and so hard it hurt, Draco watched his alluring redheaded lover slide across the bed in a way that would make any serpent proud and before he could spell out anything more than a strained “ _Ron, please... ohhhhh.... fuck, ohhh..._ ” the sensual mouth from hell he's been hopelessly addicted to, formed a loose, soft kiss around the tip of his cock... so hot, so wonderfully slick... and began sucking on his spongy head lightly while the gentle, wet tongue swept across his slit... again and again... until he was whispering frantic pleas, digging his fingers into the silken warm hair with force and rocking his hips forward, chasing that elusive mouth, just a lick away from fucking heaven... and the beautiful rosy softness was gone and a flood of obscenities and begging that poured out of his mouth at the frustration was so filthy that could make his father renounce him, but it had only made Ron smile darkly and bite on his swollen bottom lip enticingly.

Kneeling on the bed in front of him, separated only by the bottom board of the bed, Ron Weasley slowly rose up against his body and with Draco still standing they were able to see eye to eye for once. His large hands slipped onto Draco's arse and pulled him closer, kneading the fleshy buns gently and his needy, desperate cock was smashed against Ron's and he whimpered in searing, blind want, tearing his skin from inside out.

“I told you... not so fast...” the redhead's hot whisper sent shivers down his spine as the beloved and cursed mouth began playing with his earlobe. “I've got a special treat for you today, love... I want you... Draco fucking Malfoy... to fuck me... hard... spread me open... fill me up... and just fuck me... fuck me into the mattress, fuck me stupid, fuck me like you've never fucked anyone in your life... fuck me, use me, own me... like no one's ever had me before... fuck me within an inch of sanity, fuck me like I'm your little whore... and you're my loving, obliging master and make me beg, Draco... make me... god...”

It was like Ron pushed some sort of a Malfoyian trigger inside of him, he had him knocked back and writhing like a bitch in heat beneath him before he took another breath, he'd never miss a chance like that, never...

Ron was his alpha, his alpha and omega and all the letters in between, and he was offering himself freely, begging for it, whispering with feverish, needy whisper, how much he wanted this, how much he needed it... “ _I got myself ready for you, precious_ ”, “ _been dreaming of this_ ”, “ _do what you like with me..._ ”, “ _that's right... oh, fuck... that's it... there, right there... oh, right fucking there, don't you dare miss it... now fuck me... fuck me right into that spot... Draco... fuck... fuckfuckfuckfuck, Draco, please... harder, go harder... ride me, you beautiful blond bitch... write your fucking name in me... that's it... I'll make blow your load so hard you'll see stars... no one will ever be this tight around you... I'm fucking bursting around your cock, gorgeous... ride me, christandmerlin, Draco... right in there... oh, please... please, beautiful, give it to me... I want to come.... with you... now, godfuckingnow, nownownownow... ohhhhh!_ ”

He exploded buried so deeply inside of Ron's body as if he was somehow sucked inside and they were never coming apart. His hips were spasming with him unaware, his cock was spitting load after load of come inside the raw insides he had conquered, but he didn't register it, because when the orgasm hit him with force that was beyond brutal and arched his climaxing body like a bow, until he saw nothing but a million shooting stars flash through his blackened vision, Ron's whisper, hard and possessive and breathless gave him what he was craving from the very core of his torn-up heart:

“She can never have you... you're mine. Mine, mine, mine... all mine. I'll make you mine... One day, my love... Promise.”

If he wrote down what he wanted him to say, it would not have been other words. This is what it meant to be one with Ron, they lived in each other's heads, spoke out each other's hearts and they never let go. As he lay on top of him, collapsed, with a heartbeat almost tearing out of his body to join a heart it so craved, he knew they won't ever let anything come between them. They were them. Invincible, when they were together. Unbreakable, in spite of it all. In love, no matter how incredible it seemed. And he just got from Ron what he needed to make it through anything life had in store for him. Hope.

He felt his big hands close behind his back, pressing him even closer into the hot, sweat-covered skin and he never wanted to leave. He vaguely remembered he was still buried inside of him and that it's going to be hell to pay in the morning, but Ron had made no motion indicating he wanted him out, so he stayed. Joined, just for a while longer, like he never wanted to be joined with anyone else again. He belonged here and his tired brained just begged to be allowed some more of the strange serenity that settled over him and felt like a soothing bandage over the ravaged, torn thing that was his restless, miserable soul. If only he could keep him... if only there was a way for him not to lose this.

“Sickle for your thoughts...” he felt a warm murmur near his ear and it made him break a single sad smile in spite of his morose thoughts.

“It's just... nothing...” he tried masking his misery not to ruin the moment, but Ron wasn't having any of it. The redhead moved him gently in a way that he slipped out and as he hissed and mumbled something about “ _Malfoyian beast_ ”, it made Draco smile more genuinely and hide his face into the crook of his neck, his favourite place on the whole planet, a bit embarrassed yet strangely smug. The large hand came to hold him closely across the back, offering that priceless feeling of safety and closeness, while the fingers of the other hand sank deeply into his hair and began toying with the solitary blond strands.

“Talk,” he ordered him softly and feeling safe and loved in his embrace, Draco could no longer hold back:

“I... don't want to lose this,” he finally admitted and he was surprised to hear how very insecure his voice sounded. “I'm getting married in less than a week and all I can think about is that I will no longer see you every day, that we'll be living separate lives, never likely to cross paths and that we'll have to find excuses and holes in our busy schedules and... Merlin...”

He never meant to come crashing down like that, but suddenly his shoulders were shaking under the debris of the dam that kept his frustration and depression at bay, and he was crying like a goddamn sissy... Merlin's tits, how very foolish... but he couldn't seem to stop... wasting their precious moments together like this... he shouldn't... but he couldn't help himself. It was as if all the suppressed sadness and tension of the last few months since he agreed to this madness of a wedding rushed back to haunt him with a vengeance and he just couldn't -

“Shhh... don't cry, baby... please, don't... Christ, you're breaking my heart... don't... I'll find us a way... I promise, alright? I'll never let you go... never. I'll lie and cheat and... whatever. Whatever it takes for us to be together, 'kay?”Ron's voice was gentle and just the right kind of desperate and when the blond finally chanced a look at the beloved face, he saw the tears pooling at the sea-blue eyes and he tried to stop, he tried very hard, cause he could take his own heartache, but he couldn't stand to see him miserable. So he kissed them away, every last one of them, even if he was still sniffing himself and feeling like the world's biggest loser, but suddenly Ron pulled him down on his mouth to kiss him thoroughly, perhaps even roughly, and definitely as if he was anxious to tell him something – and somehow, slowly, the world righted itself.

He thought he heard him whisper “ _bloody woman... I can't... I promised... damn..._ ” between the kisses, but perhaps it was just his head messing with him, because within a few minutes of diving into full portion of Ron Weasley's heavenly mouth, feeding him silken tongue and sweetly sweeping all the problems he ever had away, he probably wasn't left with enough brain to spell his own name right and – what the hell did it matter if he had him here now, all to himself, willing and wanting and taking all he had to give...?!

There was no tomorrow for him when Ron flipped him over and got him underneath and kissed every bit of his skin, starting at that sensitive spot just under his ear, that got him moaning even before he heard all those exciting filthy promises whispered into the warmth of his hair. And there was no wedding, no wife, no gloomy future when the cruel heavenly mouth continued its journey down his neck, marking the alabaster skin so violently upon its descent that he'd never be able to heal the traces of this so badly craved brutality before the wedding, at least not without the help of magic, but he never wanted to, he planned to wear them like medals. 

And when the ginger head sank onto his nubs it was already game over... he loved this... loved it, loved it, loved it... He could get hard in three seconds flat in the middle of the most boring Arithmancy class if only he allowed his thoughts to wonder towards Ron's long fingers gently circling around his nipples and god forbid he should look at Ron and found him with a tip of the quill between his lips, sucking and nibbling distractedly... He almost knocked a hole into his table with his granite-hard cock that one time when the redhead noticed- and gave him one of his semi-dirty grins and began playing with the tip of the quill deliberately. He couldn't help himself, he'd come in his pants that time, biting his lips bloody to muffle a cry and Ron knew very well what he'd done and sucked him off most lovingly and apologetically after the class. In the class, actually. In the barely empty classroom... If someone had returned for a forgotten book that time... Oh, the bastard...

But a very experienced, very intuitive bastard... He knew how to apply just the right amount of pressure with his nibbling teeth; knew how hovering above his nubs with his fingers or his soft wet breath would make them just as erect as if he was touching them; he knew he liked them chewed on just to the point of pain and god, when he began licking and sucking them in earnest...

“Ron...” he whimpered, knowing he won't be able to hold back much longer. His arms were pinned against the bed in a clear “ _don't touch_ ” warning; his swollen, needy shaft was caught between his own stomach and that muscled hot body covering him and the tight, heavenly prison was slick with remains of Ron's come... Just the idea of his cock covered in slippery Ron's juices tore a helpless, strained moan out of him and of course his pretty chess-master noticed and Draco could feel him smile against his skin. Not a moment later the body on top of him began rocking back and forth in minuscule movements and, oh, if it wasn't just the meanest, most gorgeous symphony of sweet torture when the skin slithered against skin, setting up an insane, uneven rhythm that was spiralling him down to the very pits of lust until he was fucking himself mindlessly against the wonderful beast commanding him from above with just one goal in his blurred mind: to come, to come now, quickly, now, bloody now was too late -

“Ron...” he gasped, “Ron, please... let me... need to... need to come real bad....”

“Good boy... asking like this...” the redhead purred like a giant ginger cat and Draco just managed to catch the enticing gleam of blue eyes on his face, before he felt his arms released and his redheaded blew a moist, hot breath over his leaking, bursting cock:

“Come then... come for me, beautiful... let me have some...”

And when the decadent swollen lips sucked the tip of his cock in, softly, entirely, Draco came with a torn shout that could have woken the dead. And before he came back to his senses, he was already cradled in that big warm embrace that made him feel safe and wanted, and the redhead kissed the top of his blond hair gently.

“Better?” he asked simply and Draco nodded. He was. Inexplicably so. Though nothing much has changed, except that now he was boneless to the point of being lethargic, but his problems were still there, and his future, the future he didn't want, was still cast in stone. But somehow – he was better. His beloved redhead had fixed him yet again.

“l'll never leave you... never. Not until you ask me to... don't you ever forget that...” Ron said quietly and there was so much of the firm Gryffindor conviction in his voice that it filled up Draco with unexpected warmth and happiness and he simply slipped his head into his favourite crook of Ron's neck and closed his eyes.

“Thank you,” he still managed a sleepy whisper and was lulled to sleep by another gentle kiss on top of his head.

“Shh... you're welcome, my love... now rest, I have a...”

But Draco had already drifted away and he never heard the rest of the sentence. So it came as a complete surprise when he woke up with the evening shadows softly descending upon a summer's day and Ron was already up. Still wet from the shower and clad merely in a towel, he was sitting by the bed looking absolutely delectable, like every hot, forbidden dream Draco’s ever had - and judging by his big wide grin, he was wonderfully entertained by watching him sleep. At his disoriented, mumbled “ _whazzup... whazthetime?_ ”Ron's grin evolved into a fully-fledged laughter and within seconds he was already kneeling by his bed and kissing him chastely at the corner of the mouth.

“You, Draco Malfoy... are the most adorable, fluffy creature... while sleeping...” he managed between the short, peppering kisses and the blond grunted in frustration, because - who the hell calls a Malfoy _fluffy_ and lives to tell the tale?!... plus there was no way he could catch that elusive, toying mouth and lure a proper kiss out of it, not with his dazzled head and reflexes diminished by the fatigue, he couldn't. Salazaar in pink socks, Weasley has actually managed to fuck him numb and stupid. Bloody Gryffindors and their inexhaustible pioneering spirit!

But as he soon saw there was no big, overall victory to be won, he decided that he could do with a smaller goal for now and he mumbled in a seemingly appalled voice:

“ 'm not fluffy... What a preposterous idea! Malfoys don't do fluffy! We can't even define it!”

“Oh, shush, you so are!” Ron couldn't help but tease him. “You pout in your sleep, did you know that?! A proper Prince Charming... And you have a tiny crease from frowning between your eye-brows and you grunt most adorably. I swear if I didn't feel like fucking you every given moment of the day, I'd bloody adopt you!”

“You, Sir, are the most accomplished, insolent liar that I ever had the misfortune of sharing my perfect arse with,” Draco mumbled, but couldn't stifle a smile, when Ron made a small lost sound and did what he couldn't: captured his mouth into a solid, proprietary kiss that left him breathless and completely happy. One : zilch for Slytherin, he thought smugly, when the redhead whispered something like “ _Misfortune?! I'll show you misfortune, you blond little prat!_ ”, but a moment later he yelped at the sudden slap across his arse and somehow Ron was no longer kneeling by his side, but standing at a safe distance, slightly dishevelled with a wild gleam in the bright blue eyes, but none the worse for wear and looking insanely delicious.

The slap stung... but it was at the same time incredibly arousing. So instead of launching into his usual lamenting regarding the delicacy of the upper classes, which had long ago turned into a standing joke between them, he simply rolled onto his back, making a show of his waking, stretching body and when he was sure he had Ron's undivided attention, he merely arched his eyebrow and murmured: “Kinky... who knew?”

“Shut up,” Ron murmured, suddenly as red as his hair and by the tense tone in his voice, Draco decided that this was indeed a direction worth exploring in the future. Perhaps his giant blushing Gryffindor was more adventurous that he gave him the credit for. “I only meant to wake you up properly,” the redhead said hastily as if trying to make himself forget what he was offered just now, albeit with not so many words. “You need to get up. I have a surprise for you...”

And suddenly he looked years younger, almost anxious and definitely insecure and it kind of melted and broke Draco's heart all in one, so he got up in spite of his body screaming for rest and walked straight to him to plant a chaste kiss onto his cheek:

“Won't be a moment,” he said as sweetly as he could and though he thought he could go straight back to sleep when the wonderful, steaming water hit his pained muscles and turned him into a rag on the spot – this was for Ron, who clearly had something in mind, something he invested a lot of himself in, he could tell, and there would be time enough in the future to have himself spoiled rotten, but it was not this time. So he resolutely stepped out of the shower, only to find himself in front of Ron, who pushed a set of clothes into his arms without really looking at him and mumbled something like “ _Put these on, these were the only clothes that won't make you stand out_ ”.

Much to Draco's surprise, they were his “hang about home” clothes, nothing formal, the closest thing he’d ever wear to Muggle clothes and, though casually stylish and a perfect fit, a far cry to the type of fancy he was used to.

“Stand out from where?” Draco wondered loudly, but he couldn't get more than an enigmatic, curt “ _You'll see... I'm not going to ruin a surprise, am I?_ ” from his redheaded lover, who disappeared into the bathroom himself.

And the blond's breath stayed behind, somewhere in his throat, unimportant and forgotten, when a few moments later the tall Gryffindor showed up wearing a pair of threadbare Muggle jeans, that somehow managed to look insanely sexy, and the magical shirt he once presented him as a gift. It was the one shirt Ron referred to as “ _I'm with you_ ” shirt; the one shirt that had the power to get Draco’s blood boiling at the very sight of the silken, deep purple fabric. Its own liquid beauty seemed untouched by the hundreds of times they must have fucked with Ron wearing it, because there was hardly any turn-on greater for Draco than the addictive, wonderful smell of everything Ron that the silken fabric emanated. This shirt alone was his poison and when Ron took his hand, and asked “ _Ready?_ ” he could do nothing but nod numbly as he leaned into him, closed his eyes and inhaled the undoing scent.

He felt the familiar tug of Disapparation and though the moments of constriction felt uncommonly long, he didn’t mind one bit as long as he was able to hold on to the strong body, leading him on, keeping him safe. And when he heard the familiar pop of the Apparation, he opened his eyes and couldn’t believe what he was seeing. The setting sun painted a beautiful golden patina across the lazy river and a majestic old-fashioned bridge, and the street lights were slowly beginning to flicker on in the descending dusk along with the first pale stars. The familiar horizon was filled with small, friendly-looking cafes and businesses, humming with life and chatter of young people sitting on the river bank in small groups, drinking, laughing and lazing about.

“Paris...” he said in disbelief. “You took me to Paris.”

He remembered casually mentioning to Ron on a number of occasions how much he loved the old city with its slow buzz and refined pulse of an ancient metropolis and though the redhead had never been there, he seemed fascinated by the array of anecdotes and stories the blond had to share from his regular summer holidays in the city.

Ron looked nervous and almost coy when he nodded and said quietly, unsurely: “I thought you might like it. I’ve never been, so you’d have to take me around, but I figured maybe you wanted to grab a bite and show me the sights, walk around with me for a bit...”

And when he shyly took Draco by the hand, out in the open, in plain sight of a million people, the blond finally realized what this was all about and the overwhelming, hot wave of love and gratitude hit him with such force he couldn’t stop himself. He launched himself at his redheaded lover, almost knocking the tall body over with a sheer force of the attack, and when Ron laughed, a beautiful care-free laughter of a 22-year-old man, holding his boyfriend, Draco locked his arms behind his neck and kissed it about a hundred times. Soaked with joy through and through, he could hardly believe that for once he did not have to hide and that he could do this – and much more – and no one would bat an eye.

He wasn’t wearing his usual, impeccable clothes. He wasn’t near any of the posh places he usually hung about, he wasn’t among the wizarding folk - and glowing with love and happiness, pressed into a warm embrace of another man, he didn’t even look like himself. No one would care to look for one Draco Malfoy here, in the fading light of the day, and freedom from the confines and regulations that directed his life, was within his reach like never before. He was in Paris, he was in love and he didn't have to hide it. Better even, he was in the company of the man he was so infatuated with, he could no longer imagine breathing without, and when the last rays of sun caught in the fiery hair of Ron Weasley, painting them gold while the fading sunlight reflected in the smiling blue eyes, the one thing on his mind was:

“Perfect... You are perfect,” he blurted and before his brain could catch up with him and dull the colours of this beautiful illusion, he added quickly: “You are perfect, this day is perfect and beyond, and... thank you. For being mine.”

When Ron, visibly moved, tried to say something, the blond put his finger on the warm, plush mouth and said quickly: “Please... let me say it, or I may never get the opportunity and the courage together again. I love you, Ron Weasley. So damn much. So much it hurts. You bring light into my life, you bring joy. I've never been with anyone that would make my whole world explode in such brilliant colours. I love your laughter, I love how warm and strong and protective you are, and I love how you love me. I've never been loved like this before and when I'm with you, I'm everything I always wanted to be. Happy. In love. Caring. Over the moon. You light me up, you inspire me, you open my eyes to the beauty of this world, you put me to peace when I cannot bear its weight, you complete me. I cannot marry you before God, but in my heart, you are mine.”

“Oh, blondie...”

The gentle, unstoppable kiss poured out all those emotions that wouldn't translate from Ron's heart onto his mouth, because the redhead had no words to express how his beautiful blond lover made him feel.

“You shut up...” he told him gently between two sweet, soft kisses. “Shut up or you'll have me bawling my heart out to you, here on the streets... and that would just be embarrassing. I don't know how to say all those fancy words... but sometimes I look at you and I can't believe someone so... perfect could love me... Just look at you... look at you... you're beaming, my love... you're so gorgeous, you're out of this world. You got everyone staring at us, wondering how on Earth did that ginger freckled simpleton score such a breath-taking, stunningly beautiful man.”

Draco peaked out from his shelter in Ron's shoulder and people were indeed staring, some gawping, but most smiling indulgently, while there was even a girl sitting on a blanket who seemed to be busy sketching them. But they could all be throwing rocks at them and he wouldn't care. He looked up into his face and once again got caught in a web of those mesmerizing eyes and he lost himself in them completely. They were so very blue up close they were almost electric and he could see his own awed face staring back at him from inside them, but most of all, they were so full of love that he kind of forgot how to breathe.

And Ron touched his face gently as if he was trying to paint him with his long fingers and then spoke quietly, almost feverishly:

“How could I not love you, when you look like this... when you look _at me_ like this, when you make me feel like I'm all that and more? This Weasley feels like your king indeed, crowned by your love and it's the only crown I'll ever need. You make me feel like I, Ronald Weasley, the epitome of average and forever side-kick, scored the main prize. You put me on top, your love does. I wish I had words for you, fancy, sophisticated words to tell you how I feel about you in a thousand different hues... but I don't. Words never mattered to me much.

But though I may not have words, I have my heart to give and it is yours, Draco Malfoy. You stole a piece of it in the abandoned hallway of Hogwarts a million years ago, when you returned my kiss, you stole another part the moment you spoke words of love even when I couldn't, and I _give_ the rest to you, gladly. You own me now, Draco. I cannot walk you down the aisle, my love, but I can look you in the eye under the god's own cathedral, the canopy of stars, and tell you: I love you. I do. In my heart of hearts, I'm yours.”

He looked him deep in his eyes and Draco found himself numb and too raw for words. He felt his strong arms around him, holding him together, he smelled the heavenly scent of his warm skin, he sensed the silken hair tickle his neck and his majestic presence looming above him like a safety wall and the only thing he still wanted in that frozen moment of perfection was to drink those words out of his mouth, have a taste of them, so he would never forget the sweetness of their sound and the magic of this evening. He sought him out, offered his lips almost shyly and when the warm, sweet mouth touched him, he felt himself connect with his beloved somewhere deeply at the very core, he felt whole.

He closed his eyes and let himself drift away on the wings of their kiss and because they were young and head over heels in love in the most romantic city on the planet, they could only keep it chaste for so long. Pretty soon Ron's mouth turned demanding, just the way Draco loved it and he could feel his knees turning to jelly on the spot. Caught between the strong fingers buried in his hair and the hungry, silken tongue, devouring his sanity from the bottom of his needy mouth, the blond was feeling his insides liquefy just like every other time when he was allowed to have a taste of Ron's desire...

And Merlin, this was insane... they were in public, they were in Paris, they came all the way here - but he didn't bloody care as long as there was this incredible, urgent need growing inside him like cancer, whispering with every nerve ending he was made of, how much he wanted this, how wrong it was to stop... Until...

"Eh, vous deux! Y'a des hôtels pour ça!”

Ron, looking as if he had just woken from the trance, paid a confused, surprised look at the stranger who dropped a passing remark at them and Draco threw his head back and laughed out loud.

“I believe what the gentleman had said roughly translates to: Get a room, you two!” he explained to the frowning redhead with a big grin on his face and when he finally saw it mirrored on the relaxing face of his lover, he took his hand and pulled him behind:

“Come, I have much to show you... the room will have to wait. Right now, I’m starving.”

“Draco Malfoy, hungry... Somebody alert the authorities, I think the hell just froze over.”

“Weasley, shut up. It’s all your fault anyway, you giant, insatiable beast! He seduces me, fucks me into another dimension, the ginger incubus that he is, and just when it’s time for a meal - he Apparates us hundreds of kilometres away and continues to come onto me so I no longer know which way is up or down – and then he expects to ravage me some more with not a minute spared for nourishment! How’s that humane, I ask you?! And how is any of that my fault, you Gryffindor brute?! I cannot live off air alone, you know, and I won’t, not in Paris, not here, where it smells most heavenly of freshly baked bread and roasted chicken. I am, for the record, famished, so I hope you have some means to feed me or I just might have to most shamefully reduce myself to the life of crime and steal some of this lovely food.”

And much to his surprise. Ron reached into the pocket of his jeans with a small, smug smile in the corner of his mouth and brought out a handful of Muggle coins. At the shocked look on the Slytherin’s face his grin grew even wider and he had a hard time concealing his smugness with a casual tone of his words:

“Always be prepared, Malfoy. You didn’t think I was going to take you abroad with none of the local money at hand? That would just be irresponsible, wouldn’t it?” At the disbelieving look in his blond lover’s eyes the redhead just cackled happily and pulled him along towards the first of many tiny shops, a hip-looking little _boulangerie_ , which emitted a mouth-watering smell of fresh bread and pastries through the open door. “Come, let’s get you fed, love, I can’t have you faint on me, I’ve still got big plans for us tonight.”

Draco never remembered being happier in his life than in that magical night, wandering around and about the streets of Paris with an obnoxiously long baguette-sandwich in one hand, while his other hand was safely cradled in Ron’s warm palm, their fingers intertwined. He was trying to savour all in one - eating the delicious cheese sandwich, because he was indeed starving; talking most ungracefully through his food not to let Ron miss any of the sights; licking the remains of chocolate left from Ron’s _pain au chocolat_ off his lover’s pretty, freckled face – all he wanted was to inhale the very happiness of those unforgettable moments and breathe them in long after they were gone.

He was not Draco Malfoy tonight, the only heir to the most prominent and wealthy wizarding family in Britain, who was getting married out of duty in a matter of days; he was just an 22-year-old man, crazy in love with his gorgeous loving boyfriend in the city of romance and lights, an anonymous face in the crowd, allowed to be happy. They had strolled about for hours, Ron's jaw unhinging every so often at the sights and charms the Parisian summer night had to offer – monuments and churches, street performers with their latest tricks, the wonderful eccentric population of this melting pot of a metropolis, the relaxed atmosphere, pervaded with _joie de vivre_ \- and Draco didn't mind that he was seeing it all for the umpteenth time.

They could have been looking at the empty boxes for all he cared, what mattered to him was, that he was here with Ron, that he got to hold his hand and unexpectedly steal his kisses, lighting a blissful grin on the Gryffindor’s face; that he was able to make his eyes grow big with child-like awe at one or the other of the many marvels they came across and that he got to stop in the middle of a busy street and just kiss his impossibly sexy lover stupid in the plain sight of everyone, right until it brought the catcalls forward. Just like as if they were a real couple. And even if it was only an illusion, tonight they were.

Slowly growing tired, they sat on a small bench in an unexpected patch of green under a magnificent old tree, submerging them in darkness, and in spite of a nearby pavement busy with people passing by, talking excitedly and laughing loudly, the dark shade, barely penetrated by the street lights, provided them with an illusion of an island of peace and privacy in the bustling city. They had purchased a fairly large scoop of soft ice-cream each, and when Draco watched Ron dive into his cold treat with worshiping enthusiasm, he was instantly transported to the lofty Great Hall of Hogwarts, where they used to hold their meals and where he always made sure he picked a seat in a way that allowed him to pry on the fascinating redhead.

Merlin, the way Ron ate... A complete, royal mess didn't even begin to describe him! Back then he would always try to stuff several pieces of food into his mouth simultaneously and Draco would always found himself torn between finding it absolutely disgusting and mortifyingly arousing. And he was still the same berk! He tried to devour the melting ice as fast as he could, at the same time chewing at the cone and constantly getting his prominent freckled nose dipped into the soft cream and Draco was god-honestly getting hard just watching him lick and slurp and trying to clean his fingers and his face, all the while smiling so happily as if he was indeed still an 11-year-old boy, enjoying his favourite treat. God, he loved him... That joy, that youthful messiness and the beautiful, sparkling blue eyes looking at him from behind the creamy food... He couldn't stay away.

“C'mere,” the blond spoke, suddenly hungry and needy and whatnot at watching this... ungodly, beautiful creature do things to that goddamn ice cream he wanted to have done to himself. Great. So now he was jealous of an ice cream. Who kidnapped the sane, cool and composed Draco Malfoy and what have they done with him?! Never mind. For all he cared, they could keep the bastard, he was much happier this way. In a moment of daring inspiration he straddled Ron's lap and smiled sweetly into the stunned face.

He gently licked the trail of smeared ice cream from the pretty face and when the redhead closed his eyes and exhaled, he knew he had him. He could feel it beneath his arse, parked right on top of his crotch, that he had him, had him bad. It made him smile against his skin and he deliberately rubbed his bottom against the growing erection underneath him and was immediately awarded with a grunt and a wanton “ _fuck, Draco..._ ” He innocently took a hold of his large hand and with a “ _this needs cleaning_ ” sucked two of the sweet, sticky fingers in his mouth and began licking them obligingly, sensually until the cock underneath him pressed against the fabric covering his arse with hard, unrelenting urgency and the blond gave another, this time victorious smile. But he had once again underestimated his fiery lover.

With a nonchalant “ _fuck this_ ” Ron suddenly ditched the sorry remains of his ice cream into the near-by bin and without further ado knocked him backwards onto the bench, smiling most ferally into his gasping face. And boy, did he deliver... a second after he sprawled his magnificent muscled body on top of his willing lover, the redhead was rolling his hips down and rubbing their erections together in such slow, dirty way that the blond couldn't quite hold back the whimpers of need and crazy excitement at the thought that they were doing this in plain sight, that there was a small army of people walking not 20 feet from them and that all they had to do was to look their way...

“When was the last time...” Ron whispered in his ear with his hot, moist breath and pressed a gentle, sensual kiss right on top of it, “...you came in your pants, my beautiful debauched angel?”

The very image drew an indecently loud moan out of the blond's mouth, but the redhead had no intention of stopping there.

“I think it was that one time at Hogwarts.... the one time I licked you clean afterwards... You liked that, didn't you... my sweet, decadent little sinner? And if I'm right... you're long overdue, babe... so long overdue. Oh, you teasing little bastard... so hard... isn’t there something incredibly hot and sexy in wanting someone so much... so, so much... and not being able to do anything about it... And right now, you're at my mercy, beautiful, and I'm going to do all kinds of crazy, filthy things to you... I bet you'd like that... I bet you would.”

“Ron... please... the people...” Draco tried in one last flash of sanity, but it was slowly becoming hard to remember what was he even talking about, why would he care about some people... somewhere... unimportant... insignificant... when he had that heavenly mouth doing all kinds of unspeakable things to him. What people... what fucking people... And as if he had read his mind, the redhead smiled viciously against his mouth:

“Oh, you don't give a fuck about the people, Malfoy... or you won't in a minute, when I'm done with you. You should have known better than to push my buttons, love... Shall I make you not care, precious? Shall I make you beg for it... loud... for the audience... show them what a needy little slut you are... my little slut, for me alone... writhing against me... begging silently... cock-hungry... empty... waiting to be filled... How would you like to be fucked crazy under the Parisian sky, gorgeous...? Make those delightful sounds you only make when god couldn't stop you from coming... and fuck all. Or would you rather have me on my knees, my face buried between your legs, mouthing that gorgeous hot shaft of yours, until you melt and turn to cream in my mouth... I'd lick it all, every... last... creamy... bit... I love tasting you, no one tastes better, I'd do anything for you... anything to make it good for you right now, just say it, love, say the words... This is for you, all of it, for you alone, I want to make you breathless, my little moaning blond demon...”

“Kiss me, Ron, just kiss me... it's all it takes... all I want...” Draco whispered, because there was something more important than that unbearable tension between his legs and the wonderful weight of the man on top who could shoot him to high Heaven with his hot whisper alone – there were those sweet lips, still a bit cold and mint-flavoured from the ice-cream, covering his and Ron Weasley was here to share his breath with him, stealing his soul with every devoted kiss aimed to join them and nothing could matter more. And somehow Ron guessed what was underneath that quite plea and kissed him most gently, most lovingly he had ever kissed him ever since they recognised they could no longer live without their clandestine, desperate love from the shadows and each other, and when he whispered “ _my love_...”, there were suddenly stars shooting across the horizon and Draco was so infatuated, so immersed into the man joined with him, so in love, it took him a while to recognise they were not only in his head.

“It’s their holiday...” Ron explained without really removing his tender, enticing lips any further than an inch, the blue eyes still deeply submerged into the silver-orbs, lit up with happiness and all that hopeless love. “You know, the big one – Bastille day, is it? 14 July... I took you here for this, it's the closest thing the Muggles will ever have to magic, and it was meant to celebrate our love, but now...”

“Take me home,” Draco asked quietly. “The stars in the sky... they're beautiful... but only because they reflect in your eyes. This... was incredible, Ron... I could live to be two hundred years old and never forget it and... I don't have words enough to thank you. But right now I only want to be with you...”

And he knew he had spoken for both of them, when Ron merely smiled blissfully and with nothing but a quiet “ _hold on, my silver-eyed angel, don't let go_ ” quietly disapparated them to their apartment in the heart of Hogsmeade. The passionate redhead lost no time in getting Draco sprawled naked in their king-sized bed and then he slowly proceeded to drive him absolutely up-the-wall crazy with his unexpected lingering gentleness as if he somehow wanted to stretch the time they still had for each other. He tasted every last bit of him, kissed every inch of skin and drove him to the edge of coming a dozen times before he pulled him on top and finally gave him the control; watched him sink onto his leaking shaft, bursting with need and whispered twisted words of filth and love Draco couldn’t get enough of when he rode him as if the hard cock inside of him was the only thing keeping him alive and together.

“That's it, my beautiful... god, you're gorgeous, love, fucking yourself so thoroughly... rub yourself against my cock... rub it against that tender spot inside you, precious, the one that makes you spill all your screams and filthy little secrets... this one... oh, yeah, baby, just like that... _ohMerlinandChrist_ , have mercy, Draco, you're to die for when you beg for it... it's all yours... all for you, take it, take it, my love, take it deeper, fuck yourself harder... I want to get lost in you... join with you... be one with you... become you... I need you to own me tonight, my beautiful prince, no one else looks at me like you do, no one says my name the way you do, with so much need and urgency and devotion, it drives me crazy with love... Let me make it good for you, my silver-eyed god, let me make you come like a godless, debauched creature you are... burning yourself with my flame, riding me to fucking Heaven... shoot that beautiful load of yours from the bottom of your balls... all over me, let me bathe in it, let me have a taste of it... I crave it so... can't wait... can't bloody wait much longer... need to come... need to come real bad, baby... oh... oh, _ohgodfuckingodDraco_!!”

Their screams of utter completion intertwined as their bodies arched towards each other and in the last whim of lucidity Ron pulled his lover down onto him, to feel his body tensing up in coming, to hear his hopeless, primal yelps of ultimate surrender, to hold that crazy heartbeat against his own chest, to become one with that hot, slick skin and lean muscles he came to worship, to inhale and remember the intoxicating smell of the exotic, expensive shampoo emanating from the silken blond locks, to whisper the last words of love and sweet, impossible promises into his ear and make him feel like he had reached Heaven and never had to leave.

When Draco came to his senses, he had no breath left and not an atom of strength to spare. It was all Ron. He took care of him, positioning him gently into his embrace, cleaning them and then quietly lulling him to sleep, his long fingers treading lovingly through the blond hair, bestowing tenderness and illusion of happiness upon him and Draco was simply too destroyed to fight it. His slumber slowly turned into that of a nearly-dead man; deep and undisturbed, exhausted sleep of someone who finally found his peace and when he woke up nearly a day later, there was no trace of Ron left. Except somehow, inexplicably, the very air still smelled of him and on the bedside table there was glitter of a lonely present: a thin silver-like necklace with a tiny Eiffel tower pendant, nothing but a cheap souvenir for tourists, venerated and made priceless by one unforgettable night and their love. Draco knew Ron could not hope to buy him something expensive that would impress him, but what he gave him could not be bought: he recognised a token of love when he saw one and his heart shattered in a vice of bitter pain.

When he took the fragile present between his fingers, they were already shaking so badly he nearly dropped the silver snake of a necklace and he gripped it viciously in his hand not to start howling. It was leaving marks inside of his fist, whispering quietly of the paradise lost, and he realized that this was all he had left now: a memory of one perfect evening, spent free of his confines, walking hand in hand with a beautiful,  loving man he had so hopelessly fallen for; one night of their bliss under the canopy of stars watching over the city of lights and their forbidden, tender love. He put the necklace on quietly, charmed it unbreakable and let the despair wash over him.

He had been only half living ever since, wandering around as if lost, breathing, but barely, hardly talking and feeling blessedly numb. His felt as if his heart died that day and went to Heaven and only left an empty shell behind. And now his mother, the very person behind his misery, was trying to tell him not to give up hope. “ _Do not despair_ ” she had told him, but Draco felt as if sorrow was the only thing still keeping him from falling apart to pieces and dissolving completely.

“I think this should do,” she suddenly decided and her adept fingers promptly disappeared from his hair. She turned him towards herself and he didn’t even have the strength to fight her when she gently lifted his head by the chin to have a good look at him, though she couldn’t make him to meet her eyes. He knew was she was seeing, he knew that being miserable gave his pale complexion a tragic patina that somehow made him look otherworldly and none the less attractive. And barely living. She gave a little sigh at the full sight of him, something between annoyance and despair, but none of it showed when she spoke in a firm voice:

“It will _have_ to do... for now. I honestly don’t think I’ve ever seen you paler, Draco, dear, you’re positively _ghastly_ , darling... But I suppose you don’t think you have much to rejoice – and it will be my pleasure to prove you wrong.”

Before his numb brain could even attempt to unscramble her words, she had walked to the door of his dressing room adamantly and opened them:

“It is time.”

That was all she had said before she stepped out and suddenly the room became too small for a man who entered and filled it with his magnificent presence and radiance that always followed him around. Feeling him, perhaps inhaling and recognising his presence a fraction of a second before he actually saw him, Draco’s head shot up in a lightning bolt of disbelief and insane hope and there he was: a flash of red hair and blue eyes and Ron Weasley was standing in front of him in person, smiling, as impeccably dressed and breath-takingly gorgeous as he was ever going to see him - and just in time to catch him as his knees gave in under him.

“You two have got ten minutes to make sense of things,” Narcissa Malfoy informed them from the door as the redhead held her son for dear life and kissed him the way she had never seen anyone being kissed before: with possessiveness, defiant, hungry love, as if nothing in the world mattered but them. “Then Draco needs to be standing at the altar, next to his father,” she added, but had little hope she was even heard.

But somehow Ron managed to nod without ever removing his mouth from Draco, not that he could, even if he wanted to – the blond had practically glued himself onto him as he drank hope, courage and life from those soft lips he never dreamt of having a taste of this day.

“Make him glow, Ronald,” Narcissa all but whispered and quietly closed the door behind her as she discreetly removed herself to buy them a few more moments together; the moments they both seemed to need so badly. She had a wedding to attend to after all, the impatient guests to appease and her uncommonly jittery husband to sort out. As long as Draco was going to be there, her job was done.

“How, Ron... in god’s name, how?!” Draco managed between two kisses because his head was just a giant mess and he was in urgent need to make sense of things, to make sure that this was indeed happening and it was not merely an illusion his miserable brain had come up with to give him some comfort.

And then Ron told him.


	48. So hard to let go

“ _I adore the despair in your eyes_  
 _I worship your lips once red as wine_  
 _I crave for your scent sending shivers down my spine_  
 _I just love the way you're running out of life_

_Oh, my Baby, how beautiful you are_  
 _Oh, my Darling, completely torn apart_  
 _You're gone with the sin my Baby and beautiful you are_  
 _So gone with the sin my Darling...”_

HIM, Gone with the sin

 

“I... have got something to tell you.”

Ron nearly exhaled his relief loudly when Harry spoke. He had just opened his mouth to say the very same thing, but Harry had beaten him to it. And Ron wasn’t going to say no to a delay, no matter how minuscule one. Merlin knows he could barely breathe from the anxiety that has been pestering him and driving him to sheer panic ever since he had realized that there was no more backing off from telling Harry, that he wasn’t going to enrol as an Auror next to him.

It was the last day of school that it hit him – and hit him hard - that this was it, that he was out of time and out of excuses. Draco’s despair, the very force and trust with which the edgy, miserable Slytherin was hanging on to him, had really brought it home that he urgently needed to make his choice and that the time was now. When he had spoken to Narcissa Malfoy, it had sounded like such a perfect idea, an ingenious plan that was going to make sure he has access to his lover without having to transform his life into a complex web of lies and deceit to do so – and he only had to let Harry down when it came to his career plans. It’s not like he was going to lose him, right? Back then it didn’t seem so... but Ron wasn’t so sure anymore.

He had never put Draco before Harry so openly and the very thought was making him sick to his stomach. He didn’t want to choose – yet he could see no other way. Letting Harry down was never going to be easy and Ron had no idea if he had enough strength for something like that. He could also do with a clear head and above all, he needed to be certain it was what he really wanted. He knew Draco needed him, god, his heart shattered into a million pieces when he saw him crushed to sobs and held him through his despair. In those moments he viciously wished for something, anything, that would give his beloved blondie one last perfect memory to hold on to with the misery that lay ahead – and on a whim, he had thought of Paris and he knew what he wanted to do.

He knew how much the sophisticated youth loved the lightness and charm of the French capital and, really, this was as good a chance as they were going to get. He had heard it on the Wireless that morning, something about the 14 July and the biggest French holiday, the fireworks and the whole shebang, and when he watched the fragile figure of his blond lover cuddle lovingly into to him with grey circles of exhaustion marring his pretty face, he figured out – it's now or never. And why the hell not?! They’d never get another opportunity like this. In a week Draco would be married and he would either be at his side and Harry... He couldn’t even bear to think about it, he’s been twisting his brain around it for long enough and he needed a break badly. He would do that – give them a tiny taste of a honeymoon they were never likely to have – and to hell with it all! His beautiful blondie deserved it for all the anguish he’s put him through. And Ron knew he wanted it as well.

He needed a boost, an incentive, a strong enough motivation before he made a choice as drastic as this one. This was for him as well: one last oblivious, care-free, recklessly happy night in the arms of his lover, when he wouldn’t have to live with the consequences of his actions just yet – because the rest of his days would be tainted with the knowledge that he had let one of the two of his favourite people down terribly.

And the look on Draco’s face, when he saw where they apparated to, was totally worth it. Shock, disbelief and finally realization of what this meant when Ron took his hand... bloody hell, as lithe as his Slytherin lover was, he nearly toppled him over with the sheer force of enthusiasm when he flew into Ron’s arms! When their fingers intertwined and his silver-eyed lover leaned into him, whispering enchanting, sweet words of love and devotion, Ron knew he had made a right choice: he could no longer imagine living without that special feeling of warmth, awe, protectiveness and possessiveness that flooded him every time Draco Malfoy gave into him and showed him time and time again that he had chosen him. It still felt like a miracle every time around. 

Ron couldn’t fathom what Draco saw in him and he knew if the gorgeous and well-bred young man left him the next day for no reason, he wouldn’t have been surprised. Crushed, yes, but not surprised. So eventually he stopped wondering about it. They had something he could not explain, something far beyond words and understanding; a special kind of magic that embraced them and pulled them together as if they were only ever two parts of something that was once one. He loved him. It was as simple as that and somehow, deep down inside, he knew Draco felt the same way about him as well. And he was never more aware of it then that magical evening in Paris.

The quiet melancholy, always stored somewhere at the bottom of those grey eyes, was gone completely and Ron has never seen the blond Slytherin so at ease, so relaxed and so... happy. He loved seeing him like this. He wouldn’t mind waking up day after day to this pretty face with the usually composed patrician features softened and totally transformed by a brilliant smile. Holding onto Ron’s hand with touching care and kissing him spontaneously every once in a while, Draco Malfoy simply _radiated_ joy and love. Ron loved making him happy. It made him happy. And smug!

Like that stunt he pulled with Muggle money... Harry used to give Hugo and Freddie a handful of shiny Muggle change to play with when he came from one of his secret undercover missions, but because they tended to put it in their mouth, Hermione made Ron take it away from them and for this reason Ron often had his pockets full of Muggle cash he had no use for. Until that evening in Paris. But he wasn’t daft to bring Harry into a conversation to ruin the moment. He could always blame his resourcefulness on magic and the shocked look Malfoy paid him was well worth it. He knew he was brilliant in his own right and though he enjoyed reminding his friends of it every once in a while, demonstrating it for his haughty blond “ _oh, I’ve seen it all_ ” lover was another category of joy altogether for the redhead. An infinitely more rewarding one, it seemed, after he got to laugh his heart out at watching his usually so distinguished, yet fantastically famished boyfriend trying to wrestle a gigantic baguette to fit into his mouth. Draco Malfoy, talking with his mouth full, was a sight for gods.

Ron loved every fleeting moment of that magical evening. He's hardly ever been abroad, and he found something fascinating every three steps they took - “ _Oh, look over there!_ ”, “ _My, did you see that?!_ ”, “ _Blimey, would you look at that, that's magnificent!_ ” were a regular part of his vocabulary that evening – but most of all he felt wonderfully elated and at peace at once, holding firmly onto those fragile fingers intertwined with his, his breath hitching at every unexpected kiss from the beautiful young man at his side that literally had heads turning everywhere they went with his glow made of love and joy. His whole being was strangely in tune with him, as if his heart was somehow trying to tell him that this was the life he was supposed to have had.

When Draco kissed him against the background of fireworks exploding into the sky, he saw the same emotion mirrored in those beloved silver eyes: they needed each other, regardless of the time and place, under Parisian sky or in a solitary luxury apartment in the heart of Hogsmeade; their bodies craved each other and their hearts did and Ron knew that he was never going to find something like that again; that he was lucky that he had found it the first time around, and against all odds at that. They have been raised to be kept forever apart, their choices were meant to put even more distance between then, yet their destinies pulled them together with such force as if none of it mattered, as if a stubborn deity somewhere in the skies above them decided that they shall be, in spite of it all. 

Back in their apartment, he could no longer keep away from him. He was defenceless against the magical silver glow in those deep mysterious eyes; the alluring touch of that soft, unexpectedly hungry mouth left him wild with the raw need for more and when he felt the muscles of that perfect, alabaster body moving underneath him like a symphony, completely in synch and a perfect response to the ode of lust and love he was writing all over his skin, he knew he had found the one. Draco was his and he couldn't let go. He knew he shouldn't, he knew how very wrong it all was, but in the moment when that beautiful body arched in his arms, joining with him deeply, completely, once again all but annihilated in ecstasy, and Draco Malfoy gasped his name like it was the only thing that still mattered, the one thing he worshiped, the only thing he still remembered - “ _Ron, please... mine... Ron..._ ” - in that moment Ron no longer cared for all the rights and wrongs of this world.

Draco's strained voice pulled the orgasm out of him like needy fingers and he came with tremendous force and a helpless shout, spilling load after load inside the pliant, wonderful man underneath him, gasping for more, the hissed expletives and moaned tender endearments escaping his mouth like an echo of heaven and hell reigning inside of him, and Ron Weasley knew then he was exactly where he was meant to be. Joined with his beautiful fallen angel at last. Complete. Perfect. And he couldn't lose that.

Therefore Ron's heart was beyond sore when he held him in his arms as soft and helpless as a rag doll, tired and completely sated; simply happy and for once oblivious to the future ahead. The redhead took care of him, sheltered him and played with his hair gently just the way his blondie loved it until he lulled him into a deep, motionless, dreamless sleep of total exhaustion. For a while longer, he continued to look at his beautiful blond prize, clinging onto him so desperately as if he had nowhere else to go and his heart squeezed in helpless sympathy once his rational brain kicked in.

The redhead knew all too well how lost and bitter the fragile young man in his arms would be in the days to come and his heart broke at the thought that he could not give him more than those few fleeting moments in his embrace, all too sweet and all too short - but he would at least give him that. He couldn't give him hope, not yet, he had promised to the cruel, masterful creature that was Narcissa Malfoy, but he tried to best to give him courage and some comfort; the dishevelled, damaged young man who sought shelter in his embrace needed it so.

He quietly waited for him to fall asleep and the first rays of the summer sun were already painting the morning sky pink when he covered him carefully and kissed him gently and left him a necklace with a tiny Eiffel tower pendant as a solitary reminder of their time together. An identical one was already hanging around his neck as he had picked the pair of them unnoticed on one of the tourist stalls with the last of the Muggle coins he had left. He had to give him something, a memory, some warmth and strength and he knew that Draco would cherish the small souvenir, worthless in terms of money, beyond any other treasure he possessed. A piece of unblemished happiness would forever be within his reach.

And now he had to do this right. He had made his decision that afternoon when Narcissa Malfoy presented him with the opportunity he could never hope for, and now he had to break the news to Harry. He could only hope he wouldn’t shatter in the proces. Hurting Harry was always on the very top of his _“Don’t you ever...”_ list and now he was about to do just that. But there was no other way around, not for him. He loved Harry, he truly did, Harry was the one person Ron clang to fiercely because it represented everything good and right in his world. He should have been the love of his life, the simple, straight-forward life he was meant to have if it wasn’t for the fucking war that twisted them all so in unexpected directions.

But as it was, he could not help the man he had become and that man craved Draco Malfoy beyond anything reasonable and good and right. They, Draco and himself, should never have been... _it_ , something... whatever they were; yet inexplicably they were drawn together with a force that made them both ruthlessly override their upbringing, the mutual hatred and every instinct they had, screaming that this was wrong. Ron never imagined himself feeling something so primal, so... possessive and proprietary when it came to another person. Something inside of him called to Draco Malfoy and something inside Draco Malfoy responded so violently it scared him beyond words and left him with a heart, beating like a drum. Not having him, not having a chance to be with him, was not an option. Ron belonged.

He belonged right there at the side of strangely vulnerable young man that fiercely hid his true self behind the wall of his marble, impeccable exterior of superiority and snark, but Ron knew he could bring that wall crashing down with a single tender touch, with nothing but an inviting smile or a tilt of his head. Draco Malfoy was his, willingly so. And that’s why Ron had to do this, even if it meant breaking a promise to someone as important as Harry was to him, even if he had to let their boyish dreams of living and working together die. He felt he had no other choice. He needed Draco Malfoy in his life and the fleeting, chance encounters once every blue moon just weren't going to be enough. But if price for a life he chose was Harry's friendship... he hoped not. It would tear him apart.

Therefore he was beyond edgy when Harry asked him in a strained voice in he was up to a night out – which in their terms usually meant a pint at the Three broomstick in case someone started asking questions, followed by a very private, very debauched all-night party for two only at Grimmauld Place. And Ron agreed. It was not like he could delay any longer, besides Harry seemed to be particularly tense that night, his complexion pale to the point of transparent and the green eyes huge, almost feverish. Harry needed him, Ron could tell, and he was not in the habit of letting Harry down deliberately. Not until that night, at least, and the fact that he was about to, was making Ron a jumpy mess of tangled nerves.

Their usual pint seemed to drag on forever and there were friends dropping by, offering Ron congratulations for his NEWTs and strangers shyly approaching Harry for signature or simply to shake hands with the great Harry Potter – nothing out of the usual, really, except it alls seemed to have been stretched through uncommonly long time, with Harry looking at him across his pint wistfully with electrified eyes – and then all of the sudden it was all over and he very nearly collapsed when Harry took his hand and apparated them to their lovers' nest. The green-eyed prodigy didn't bother with any other place than Ron's favourite, the room with a big polar bear fur in front of a fireplace and even though the place had been abandoned since their last visit, with magic as magnificent as Harry's it only took moments for the candles to ligth up and and the stale hot air to be refreshed by a summer's breeze.

Ron's heart was nearly in his throat with panic when Harry kneeled down next to him, took his hands into his smaller palms gently and stole a first, nearly shy kiss. He didn't think he could go through with this, being intimate with Harry while he knew that he had a bomb-shell to drop that might just shatter their friendship and Harry's heart and he took a big breath to finally blurt it out, get the first words off his chest, because somehow it had to be easier afterward, right? He looked Harry straight in the eyes and opened his mouth to say it, when Harry beat him by a fraction of a second.

“I... have got something to tell you.”

And in spite of his own relief Ron suddenly noticed how very tense Harry's voice was, and that his bony fingers were shaking and a whole new type of anxiety got a hold of his heart: Harry couldn't be ill, could he?! What was wrong!? He could tell something was off and within a moment his own problems slipped to the background the way they always did when his best mate was concerned.

Harry's fingers gripped his viciously as if that was the only way for the young man to control his anxiety and then he blurted out in a tense voice:

“Ginny is pregnant.”

And Ron just stared at him with his jaw unhinged and his mind a blur. Of course she was. She was a Weasley, wasn't she? And if Ron had casually mentioned to her a month or two ago, how much Harry adored James and that it might not be such a bad idea to give him a little brother or a sister soon, before she jumpstarted her career as a Quidditch player – it wasn't like he could have caused it, was it?He'd been thinking quite intensely - and with little results - how to break the news to Harry at the time and he had been getting desperate for the sheer lack of ideas - and having more children _might_ give his reasoning why being Aurors wasn't such a good idea some solid weight, he thought insanely, so he mentioned it to Gin on a whim, without really thinking much of it, without really expecting anything would come out of it, not really, it was such a long shot...

And now he felt guilty as fuck. He should have known better. He should have known his sister and her obssessive love of her husband would make her assume that Ron, as his best mate, knew the deepest wishes of Harry's heart and she would jump to oblige him. And he hadn't _really_ known if Harry would appreciate more children at this point... God dammit... what a mess! And it was all his fault!

“What now?” he said, before he thought it through, just to cut through the silence which was becoming more miserable by a second and Harry's fingers, gripping his hands like a pair of vices, were making his hands numb. But suddenly Harry's head was on his chest and his arms slipped around his waist looking for closeness and support as Harry Potter was trying to find his strength and the right words. And without ever thinking twice, Ron's arms locked around him and he held him close, just like his best mate needed it.

“You know I love you, Ron... I love you to death and back...”

The voice of the raven-haired youth was quiet and filled with bitterness and misery to the brim and Ron only thought about making it better for him, so he kissed the top of his head gently and spoke softly:

“Never doubted it for a second, mate... and don't forget how well I know you, Harry. You're going to love this child the second you set your eyes on him - or her! - so this is a good thing, right, this is wonderful news...”

“But that's just it! I love that baby already! I completely blacked out anything but joy last night when she told me, I fell asleep with my head on her belly, I was so happy... And then in the middle of the night I woke up with this terrible thought in my head of what this _really_ meant... a year longer, or two... before we... you know... And it just can't come soon enough, Ron, believe me, I really, _really_ want it, want _you_ , you must know, I cannot stand the thought of future without you and I being together in it...”

He looked at him with his big, green, feverish eyes and Ron, with a knot in his throat, simply nodded, thinking miserably that his task had somehow just become more difficult by tenfold. But then Harry sought out his mouth hungrily, as if he wasn't entirely certain that Ron believed his declaration of love, and Ron felt a familiar sensation of melting into Harry, into the safe and familiar scent and taste and he stopped thinking altogether.

“You must belive me, Ron... I need you to believe me... I'd never let you down...” Harry whispered between his alluring kisses and Ron breathed into his mouth:

“Don't, Harry... of course I believe you... of course I do... we'll always be here for each other, won't we?”

And just like this, Harry's lips let go of his, albeit slowly as if they didn't want to do their owner's bidding, and the green-eyed youth leaned his head back on Ron's chest, as if he needed to hear his heart to believe it.

“You haven't heard the worst of it,” he spoke after a while, his voice just above the whisper and then it fell out of his mouth like a giant rock that was stifling his very soul: “I cannot re-join the Aurors to be with you, Ron, at least not for another couple of years. Ginny says... she needs me,Ron, she's had a rough pregnancy once before, and my little Jamie needs me and now there will be another baby... No one needs a father who sometimes doesn't even come home in the evening and who one day might not come home at all. I don't want Jamie and the baby grow up without knowing their dad, like I had to, I... simply cannot have that, please understand. Besides Gin could really use a helping hand... She's put her entire career on hold for this and I can't let her down.

You know that day you told me Hermione was pregnant and you couldn't join the Aurors with me? I was crushed... but now I understand. You know I'd do anything to be with you, just like we'd planned it; if it was just me, I would have done whatever it took. But now... God, Ron, please, say something, I can't stand you being so silent, please don't feel let down, love, we'll find another way to be together, I promise...”

The despair breathed out of Harry's voice like fire-dragon and Ron blurted without even thinking much:

“I've also got news... Hermione is leaving me.”

Harry froze in his arms and when he exhaled, it was nothing but: “Merlin, Ron... how? Why _now_? What now?”

And Ron just let his shoulders slump and he wrapped his arms around Harry even more tightly.

“She says she won't share me and she won't be a hostage to her own heart for the rest of her life. She's really hurt, Harry and I can't believe I've fucked this up so badly. She's such an amazing girl, and now she'll be gone and... Merlin... I'll be lost without her, I know I will be.”

“Hey... she'll still be your friend, won't she?” Harry spoke gently, his own sorrow temporary forgotten. “Has she said anything to the contrary, then? No? You see! I know Hermione, she'll care even more when she's not around and she cannot control the way things are going! Don't be sad... you know... a year ago I would have thought this would be the best news ever, she'd let you go and we could be together - and now everything is so, _so_ very different. I have Jamie and I can't leave him behind, he only has to look at me those big blue eyes of his, your eyes, Ron, and my heart soars and I cannot imagine ever letting him down. I have to be there for him, Ron, the way my dad could never be there for me...”

Harry sighed almost imperceptibly, but Ron knew him well enough to realize he was struggling with a thought, a memory that bore heavy on his heart. When he finally spoke, his voice was barely audible:

“I still remember the nightmares I used to have as a child and no one ever came to comfort me, to hold me... My whole fucking childhood was just one big nightmare and imagine how different it could have been if my parents had lived. I can't, I simply can't risk my child, my children, going through something like that. God... what the hell am I supposed to do!?" His voice was one of utter despair: "It seems the more I want to be with you, the more life drags us apart.”

And Ron was thinking the exact same thing: it was as if everything conspired against them, as if they were simply not meant to be and the winds of Fate were pushing him away from Harry and towards Draco with unbeatable force, as if the cruel lady was trying to say: “No, not here, you got it wrong, you're meant to be there!”

So he spoke: “There's more.”

He felt Harry's muscles tense underneath his fingers as if in expectation of another blow and he said it quickly before he lost the momentum and his courage:

“I can't survive on a salary of a trainee Auror, Harry, not as a single parent I can't. You know Hermione has been the sole supporter of our family and with her money gone... We agreed that kids will be cared for and home-schooled by my mom, and you know my mother – she can't wait to have the house full of children once more and as long as she draws breatht, they'll never starve, that much is certain. But I can't expect my parents to support them and myself with them, I've got to bring in my share. So... this morning, I got an offer that's at least worth checking out, though... you're not going to like it, I can tell you that. But it's not like I have many other options, you know...”

He looked into his eyes pleadingly and when Harry frowned, he blurted out the last of it before he could change his mind:

“Narcissa Malfoy sent me an owl-mail. She wants to see me tomorrow. She had heard of my NEWT grade in Defensive Charms and is considering hiring me to protect her son.”

And Harry's eyes just got as big as planets and before the redhead got a chance to say another thing, Harry spat out with venom: “No. Ron, no! Don't even think it, don't even... no. You can't! I won't stand for it. You can't. Don't. Please... don't.”

In the end his voice was a mixture of despair and pleading and Ron's heart felt as heavy as a rock. This was even harder than he had thought. He took a deep breath and tried with a gentle persuason:

“Harry, please... don't make this harder for me than in already is. It's not like I have job offers to chose from, you know... I'm not you, I'm not the great Harry Potter, who single-handedly evaporated the biggest villain of our time... and I've been staying at home for far too long for people to remember my part in the war. And with no means to support myself I have to consider all my options and the payment she stated in her letter – it would be more than enough to live independently, keep the place we have now and pay it off slowly, perhaps even save some. For this sum - ” he told Harry what it was and saw his eyes grow wide in shock - “... well, I think it's at least worth hearing the woman out...”

“I'll give you the money, Ron,” Harry interrupted wildly and his eyes were almost feverish with despair. “I'll give you as much as you need. I'll pay for your apartment, I'll buy the damn thing and give it to you as a graduation present, you know I can afford it! I may not have as much as the Malfoys, but I'm willing to pay you to stay away from them; I'd consider it money well-spent.”

“Harry, that's just.... nuts, man,” Ron said gently, torn between despair at his best mate's pig-headedness and profound desire not to hurt his feelings. “You know I can't accept that, you know it. I'd hate myself, people would ask questions... This is not a moment when you want your life under Skeeter's microscope, Harry, god knows it'll be hard enough for Hermione and I when the news hits. Just...”

“I don't care, Ron,” Harry repeated stubbornly, his voice tense with agitation and determination that almost made Ron cringe. “Let Skeeter do her worst, see if I give a damn. I don't want you anywhere near that bastard.”

So there is was, out at last, and Ron exhaled heavily to keep his temper in check.

“It is not your decision to make, Harry,” he said as calmly as he could manage. “We've talked about this, you have to allow me to make my own choices, mate. Even if they turn out to be mistakes, you can't just shelter me from the world, I have to at least try and find my way in it by myself. Merlin knows I fail often enough and then you can pick up the pieces, cause that's what friends do, Harry. They don't stand in each other's way and take their choices from them, that's not the way, babe. You're going to have to trust me on this one...”

“He put her up to it, that Slytherin bastard did, I'm sure of it,” Harry fumed as if he had not heard a word of what Ron had said. “I saw how he looks at you, I saw... Merlin, Ron, how can you even want this?! You used to hate the evil git, and now you're considering working for him, how's that even an option?! Just... wait a while. I'll get you a job interview, something... something that pays well enough, so you can support the kids, just... don't do this. Please, Ron... don't.”

The way Harry pressed into him, as if his whole world was crumbling, very nearly broke Ron's heart and his resolution. Bloody hell, he couldn't leave Harry like this, he couldn't... he had to give him something, anything. He tried one last time before he lost what little nerve he had to do this:

“Harry, mate... don't be like this. Draco doesn't even know, babe... The letter strictly forbade me to talk to him about it or to mention the offer to anyone, but I figured you... I had to let you know, right? You're my... you're mine, love, I gave you my ring, I accepted yours, I'm hand-fasted to you for life, Harry. It would just be a job, love.... He wouldn't even employ me, Narcissa Malfoy would, because he's getting married now and he'd be parading about much more than he used to and she's concerned about his safety. And rightfully so, if you don't mind me saying so.

You know how the world looks at Malfoys – like they're scum who managed to slip through the fingers of justice somehow and they continue to live a life of privileged and luxury with no accountability for their actions. It's just a matter of time before someone picks Draco as a target. You know he'd been harassed at school and it's a closed system, but once he's out there... This is the one thing I'm good at, Harry, standing between the evil and a person who matters. I've done it for you, because I chose to, because I love you to bits and you're that important to me... and I'm going to do it for Malfoy if I'm hired, because I need to feel useful and I need to support my family. Please don't take this away from me....”

He saw his pleading struck a cord with Harry, but his eyes were so full of misery that he just couldn't leave it at that. Making Harry unhappy was not something he was equipped to deal with.

“When I come home in the evening, we'll still be us, OK?” he spoke gently. “And unlike in the Auror job, I'd be home nearly every evening. And perhaps with Hermione gone, we can refurbish the master bedroom some and make it our bedroom and you can come over and stay the night as often as you can. You know, take James out of Ginny's hands for a while, let her have a peaceful night, bring him over to get used to his cousins a bit... And stay with me. How would you like that, babe?” he murmured in his ear and pulled him closer with one possessive hand slipping over his arse and kneading it enticingly.

Finally a smile. A small, tired one, but a smile nevertheless. As Harry Potter melted into his lover, he pressed a tiny kiss up his endless neck, and another and another, until he reached his ear and he whispered feverishly:

“Promise, you'll be with me one day, Ron. Promise... it's all I want. Promise – and... I'll let you have any job you want I I won't bring it up again. Just... promise, Ron, please... I need it. Need to hear... need to know you'll be mine.”

And because Ron was Harry's Ron, someone who could never deny Harry anything, he had breathed a quiet: “ _Promise_...” and his heart felt heavy as lead. He had made a promise like this one to another man just a few days ago, made it willingly and from the bottom of his heart – but he felt he could never feel whole again if he broke Harry's heart. He couldn't stand to see Harry unhappy, his world simply crumbled to pieces when he was; and because he was Ron, the one person who was forever torn on the crossroads of right and wrong, he had doomed himself yet again to keep his precious, fragile world in balance. He's just going to have to trust his Fate that it's not going to come all to misery in the end, simply because he couldn't choose between the two persons he came to love. Perhaps he is going to lose them both, his heart and himself in the process, but a few years of happiness they could all enjoy was worth it, he decided behind the closed eyelids when Harry's soft mouth sought him out and spelled out for him how much the passionate young man had missed him.

But there must have been a small part of him resenting Harry writhing the promise out of him like that, because he was a merciless lover to him that night and when he wanted to leave in the morning, there was a completely destroyed young man clinging onto him as if they have somehow magically grown into one over the night, mumbling in a tired voice something he could barely decipher as _“...a few more minutes, Ron, just a few... you always have to rush... and I can't even bloody move, you beast...”_ , so he stayed a bit longer and held him until he heard his breathing turn even, just because this was his Harry and letting go was just too damn hard. He knew this house of cards he was building with his promises and compromises was going to come crashing down on him one day, but he knew no other way. Letting Harry down was not an option... and neither was letting Draco go.

So he went to have a conversation with Narcissa Malfoy that day, a mere formality for the sake of appearances, and she didn't seem to care much when he informed her that Harry won't be able to train him.

“Don't be ridiculous, Ronald. We both know what this is all about and should the circumstance occur where you indeed need to step between my son and someone who wishes to harm him, I have absolute trust in you. You love my son, you will do your best and I am above and beyond certain that no prodigy nor any expert we chose to hire would be able to do more.”

And she smiled at his reddening face and found his _“Can't blame a man for wanting to do the job he's getting ridiculous amout of galleons for, right and proper, you know?!”_ adorable. On his way out he encountered Malfoy Senior who, surprisingly, didn't look much like rejoicing but more as if his favourite Kneazle had died. He turned up his nose most viciously at the sight of Ron and immediatelly turned around hastily as if he had just encountered a Dementor on the loose. The bone-chilling look he threw at the redhead across the shoulder, had but little effect on Ron, who just shrugged. He had been duly warned by Narcissa that her husband was less than in enthusiastic about the idea of having a Weasley under his roof, but she immediately added rather sternly that Ron should come directly to her if he encountered any difficulty or incivility on her husband's part – she seemed to think he wouldn't have ther nerve. And indeed, he didn't, as Ron learned much to his surprise. Nothing but an angry hiss came out of his mouth, when Ron nodded coolly in his direction while the redhead felt himself gracious enough for not being openly hostile. Honestly, the things he put up with for his blondie...

Narcissa gave him the strictest instructions on when to come and pick up Draco, how to behave, where his position was during the ceremony and not, for Merlin's sake, to bother with the proper attire, all the clothing should be delivered to him in time, so the proper etiquette was followed to the last dot. But for all the information she gave him, she couldn't tell him how to feel. He went straight to Harry after their conversation, his head so overwhelmed with a million instructions and the crazy whirl of emotions, he desperately needed to find some peace of mind and his confidence. So he found an excuse to lure Harry out of the house and away from Ginny and without ever giving him a chance to breathe he apparated them to his abandoned home and proceeded to ravage him stupid on a bed that once belonged to him and his wife.

And only when he saw him underneath, breathless and completely fucked empty of anything but a big senseless smile, Ron felt as if he once again had a grip on his life and he lay his head on Harry's chest and listened to his heartbeat to know that he was still doing alright. The bony fingers eventually crawled into his hair and combed it gently and Ron knew Harry understood.

“So I take it you're hired?” the green-eyed man, who's been in control of Ron's life for longer that he could remember, asked quietly and Ron said nothing. He simply closed his eyes and let the peace, that listening to Harry's heart always brought him, wash over him.

“Well... congratulations, babe...” was all Harry Potter had to say about it, while treading gently through his hair, and also: “I'll murder them all in their sleep if they hurt a single hair on your head, I hope you know that... I hope they do.”

And in spite of it all, Ron slipped a small smile. That was his Harry, forever the protector of the innocent... and of the not so innocent, in this case. At that moment he only wished that his life wasn't so bloody complicated, that he could stay forever in Harry's embrace, enhaling the familiar smell of his skin that spelled safety and comfort to Ron since they were kids lying next to each other by the lake at Hogwarts; listening to Harry's heart and let it lull him to sleep. But he knew that as soon as he'd close his eyes, his dreams would be flooded with the images of soft locks of blond hair plastered across the aristocratic face with those unfathomable grey eyes calling to him and that incredible, exotic smell of alabaster skin that could make him go wild with its scent alone. He could get lost in Harry, he'd never lose that, but it was Draco he dreamed of.

But tonight was for Harry, the last night when he'd belong to no one else, the last night he could press into his embrace without having to scrub the smell of another man off his skin. So he pressed into him and kissed him right in the centre of his chest, on top of his heart and felt his breath hitch.

“Will she miss you, if you don't come home tonight?” she asked him in a low, enticing voice and he knew that after another gentle kiss or two, placed strategically just under his nipples, Harry won't give a fuck.

“Probably... fuck, Ron... Merlin... don't stop... It's not like I care... oh, fuck, baby... not when you work my nubs with that gorgeous, hungry mouth of yours... god, man... as long as James is taken care of... and he... oh, Christ, Ron... is. I thought I couldn't anymore... please... thought you've fucked me empty... oh, fuck, babe... but I only have to feel that angry, hot cock of yours... slide all smooth and hard against my skin... and you have me, you redheaded demon... you so have me... Ron, please... lick the fire off my skin... I'd do anything for you... anything.... when that silken, fiery head of yours presses into me, I lose myself completely... god, gorgeous... you have no idea how many wanks I have over you... just thinking of you.... thinking of this... your mouth, this fucking mouth that should be forbidden, travelling down my body... your adept fingers set on exploring every inch of me, seducing me... exciting me... opening me up... burning me... getting me ready... oh, Ron, fuck... debauching me with that sick tongue of yours... melting me, fucking me with those innocent blue eyes of yours till I'm just leaking down my shaft and I'm dying to take you in... so ready... oh, god... fuck, Ron...”

“God, Potter... how is it, that you still have my come oozing down your thighs and yet you're so incredibly tight... and hot... like a virgin on her first night of innocence lost... can I fuck your beautiful... tight... virgin arse, gorgeous?... can I, Harry?... I want to... I so want to... I'd bend your knees backwards, so I can see your round... pink hole... calling onto me... inviting me in... I'd have full access like this... touch you... lick you... fuck you... anything you like... what would you like, precious? I'll do anything for you... you need my fingers inside you, finding that spot?... like so... one by one... slowly... there you go, gorgeous... I love watching you fuck yourself on my fingers... your whole body tenses and you look seconds from coming...”

By this time Harry was nearly senseless. Moving in an ancient, insane rhythm to respond to a godless, itching pressure inside of him that was driving him crazy he could barely register the soft, wet lips hissing love and filth straight into his buzzing ears.

“Would you like some more?... would you like my stone-hard cock fucking you into the mattress... and into another fucking dimension, you gorgeous son of a bitch... Harry... my Harry... I'm hungry for it, babe... let me have it, beautiful, you know how I fall apart inside you... you like watching me fall apart inside you, don't you... you like watching me get all needy and bothered... you love hearing me curse the fuck out of you and your tight hole... you can't get enough of me gasping your name as I pound into that special, raw spot... that sends sparks up and down your nerves and you scream most beautifully... How much do you need me, Harry? How much do need your Ron? C'mon, beautiful... tell me... I want you to fall apart around my name... I want you to feel me, only me, as I fill you up and fuck you so hard, you know no other name but mine...”

“RonRonRonRon, oh, oh, oh, _GodhavemercyRon_!!!”

As Harry's body shot off the mattress in a mother of all orgasms, Ron came to the sight of beloved green eyes opening and holding onto his blue gaze even though he could tell the man behind them was no longer there.

And just like that, he won. He knew he had won when the morning came and he got up silently and Harry said nothing, no bitter remark about Ron leaving him; instead, his green-eyed mate joined him in shower and helped scrub him spotless, washed his hair with loving care and quietly watched him shave. Two majestic owls delivered a parcel with clothes that nearly knocked the breath out of Ron when he first set his eyes on the expensive fabric and when he put them on, they were a perfect fit, making him look absolutely stunning.

"You'll knock them off their feet, love," Harry finally spoke quietly when he saw his redheaded best-mate observe himself self-consciously in the mirror. "You're to die for... but I always thought you were, even without the fancy clothes on. They're not worth a single freckle on you, the whole lot of them... you're all that and more."

 There was something in his voice, a certain heaviness that told Ron  how hard this must have been for him, so he walked to him and took his face between the palms of his hands and kissed him gently straight on the mouth:

“Thank you,” he said simply and the way Harry nodded numbly and pulled him down for another tender kiss, closing his eyes, as if he was trying to hide the traces of sudden moisture and his true feelings, broke Ron's heart all over again.

“I need to go,” he whispered reluctantly after a few long moments, filled with equal measures of sweetest love and darkest despair and Harry simply let their kiss dissolve and he moved a step away, his expression every bit as if he was desperately trying to plaster a thin layer of indifference over a broken heart and Ron didn't know how to undo the misery he caused, so he blurted out:

“Tomorrow, yeah? Only until tomorrow, and then I'll be with you again. I don't know what is expected of me tonight, so I can't give you any promises, but tomorrow evening...”

“It's alright, Ron... really,” Harry said quietly, hastily, as if he was eager to have the dreadful experience, cutting his heart in half, over with. “I only wanted one promise from you and you gave me that, so... you need to go now, you don't want to be late on your first day at work, not when it's such a grand one...”

There was just a tinge of bitterness in his voice, but it was something Ron could not live with, so he made a step towards him, to try once more and undo the damage, but Harry lifted his hand with that inner authority he's always had and said quietly:

“Don't. Please, just go. I'll be here tomorrow, waiting, and I hope you will be, too. But you need to go now.”

So with blue eyes still glued on the deathly pale face where only the legendary green flames burned with despair and resignation, Ron disapparated with a heart as heavy as stone and if Harry Potter, the Saviour of the wizarding world and one of the bravest men alive, collapsed on their bed, the bed they had just made love on, and cried like a child, Ron knew nothing of it. The wheels of his destiny were already set in motion and they were taking him in another direction, tearing the heart he had given to two men, apart.  

 


	49. Take me to Church 1/4 - Prelude

_Take me to church_  
_I'll worship like a dog at the shrine of your lies_  
_I'll tell you my sins so you can sharpen your knife_  
_Offer me my deathless death_  
_Good God, let me give you my life_

Hozier, Take me to church

 

“You're stunning....”

It must have been a dozen times Draco Malfoy had said that, looking at his lover, unable to believe that he once again came to his rescue. Nothing could dampen his spirits now, nothing... So what if he was getting married to a stranger he cared nothing for in the next few minutes! Ron would be there, smiling at him from the edge of the crowd and nothing else mattered. His mother's plan was simply brilliant and Draco secretly vowed never to doubt her again. She gave him this... Ron, a chance to be with him and he couldn't even begin to wrap his brain around it yet, so exhilarated he was and so, so... _insanely_ happy. The very air smelled differently with him around, the colours exploded back into the world with brilliance and Ron was... he was... Draco had no words for him.

“Just so bloody stunning...” he murmured once again and hid his horridly goofy grin he couldn't seem to lose in the crook of his neck. And Ron just smiled, quietly, indulgently and pulled him deeply into his personal space, holding him firmly across the back as if he wanted to say “ _I got you, babe; I got this_ ”. When Narcissa let him in, he got a right scare at the sight of the transparent tinge of his complexion and sullen, resigned eyes, as dead and desperate as the dark grey sea – and the transformation into this glowing, almost hysterically happy young man has left him slightly unhinged and smug as hell. It felt good – and a bit scary – that he held such power over the young man, currently curled up tightly into him and he would be lying to himself if it didn't make him feel a tad better after the heart-breaking departure from Harry. After all, the reception he got upon apparating to the Manor, was a far cry from Draco's enthusiasm.

~

Much to his surprise, he was immediately intercepted at the point of apparation by the uncommonly jittery Lucius Malfoy, who barked with something that came uncomfortably close to relief:

“Finally! I should have known you were going to be late, the incompe - … oh, blast... anyway, my wife insists we should not start without you and she sent me - as a common house-elf! - to deliver a message to you upon your arrival, that you are to go directly to my son's dressing room and proceed according to your prior instructions.”

The exact words Narcissa had sent him off to do the task were actually:

“For Merlin's sake, Lucius! Will you, _please_ , get from under my feet already, sulking and jumping out of your skin every darned second! I've got a thousand errands to run and if you really wish to make yourself useful, go wait for Ronald and send him to Draco's dressing room immediately, from then on he knows what to do. We shan't proceed before he's present and if – for whatever reason – he decides not to take us up on our employment offer and does not grace us with his presence, please be informed I shall feel compelled to halt the proceedings immediately!”

So it was with utmost indignation, mixed with relief, that Lucius Malfoy saw the Weasley boy arrive and – thunder and lightning, he never in his life thought the future of his family would be down to one Weasley arriving on time, honestly...! What _had_ he been reduced to due to that blasted war?! Still, the boy came, looking surprisingly acceptable – some might even be pressed to say he was rather stunning, but please, he was still a Weasley! - and Narcissa's capricious nature was to be satisfied and her lamentable wish fulfilled. Arthur's son could go to hell first thing tomorrow morning, for all Lucius cared, as long as he had made a timely appearance this morning and step into the shoes Narcissa had laid out for him.

Lucius couldn't possibly fathom what had motivated the redhead into taking the job, simply because everyone knew it wasn't money - you cared nothing for money if your were born a Weasley and fed daft principles of morality over importance and influence for breakfast by Arthur Weasley himself! Lucius therefore threw him a suspicious look as if he was trying to catch him sowing secret spying charms all over the Manor and, oh, blast, it was _very_ disconcerting how very tall the Weasley menace was; it was most inconvenient having to assert a point that he was just a glorified servant – and having to look up to do it!

And it didn't improve Lucius's temper one bit that he looked so very much like his despised father! Why, oh, why did he have to tolerate his worst nemesis' spawn in his own home – and the very individual, in the abundance of the lot, that looked like a spitting image of his hated Sire!? Couldn't Narcissa have picked one of the other freckled freaks?! How about the stocky one, taming dragons in some bush? Surely, he could do the job - and he was mostly a Prewett as far as the looks went! Or better even, the Weasley girl?! The word was, she was fierce – much like her temperamental mother! - as well as talented and... reasonably tolerable to look at. Terrible taste in company, of course, marrying that awful half-blood Potter, but still... she had almost none of Arthur's features, while this one... Lucius had to stop himself from wincing every time he had made a mistake of glancing at him, it vividly brought back every unfortunate encounter with his bloody father and none of the memories were particularly pleasant! 

The only thing that was any kind of consolation was the thought that Arthur must be just as furious at his son for accepting the position of the Malfoy _servant_ as he was at the fact that he had to tolerate the ginger vermin under his roof and even pay him for the time spent! Still... it was _his wife_ who had reduced herself to requesting his services, thus recognising their worth, and it was _his son_ who had agreed to place his life and his safety in the hands of one Weasley - and it was this thought that burned at the back of Lucius's mind, clouding his joy at the wedding of his only son, spicing this glorious day with a tinge of bitterness. Bloody Weasleys, ruining the day of his greatest victory like this!

And why the hell was he taking the man around the enormous property by foot?! The darned dressing room, where his sour, sulking son had barricaded himself in, just _couldn't_ appear fast enough! He should have just apparated them and have it over with, but that would require _touching_ the Weasley boy – and Lucius was under no circumstances willing to do that! He still vividly remembered getting his hands on one of the lot for the last time – well, Arthur, it was only ever Arthur, he didn't really wander around England _feeling_ the freckled mob, did he!? The punch the bloody man delivered him in that book store, where they – most uncivilly, regrettably – engaged in a hands-on row, had the jolt of electricity running up his limbs unlike any other he had ever experienced. It was as if the old, pureblood magic crashed through him and decidedly didn't like what it encountered and turned viciously against him! He had had all kinds of unfortunate and... embarrassing... bodily reactions that day in the wake of him coming skin to skin with his most despised and fierce opponent and he truly didn't care for _ever_ reliving the experience again, once was quite disconcerting enough, thank you very much!

Hopefully, this kind of reaction was just as hereditary as the looks from father to son had been – at least that should minimize the possibility of his son ever soiling his hands by going near the ginger scum! How had his beloved, proud son ever agree to make use of the services of this dreadful... _Weasley_ , was beyond Lucius! Draco had always hated the red-headed mob, Lucius had made sure of that, and before the war hardly a day of his holiday ever went by in which he didn't mention – with glee! - his cruel designs and taunts he had made ready for the son of his father's greatest enemy and his horrible company. How had his beautiful, bright son ever moved on from planning Weasley's demise to agreeing to Narcissa's mad idea to put his life and safety into his adversary's hands was entirely incomprehensible to Lucius. He himself had never let go of any of the petty grudges he held, not even as a child, and once someone had made an enemy out of Lucius, they were enemies for life.

But Draco... a lot has changed for his son and his family with the unfortunate outcome of the war – and as much as it had pained him to admit it – his son had changed as well. He was always capricious and moody, but he was once full of life – perhaps even a tad too temperamental to suit the character of a skilled politician, which was one of Lucius's ambitions for the boy – but the war had delivered him a mere shell of that person. Moodiness was upgraded by a strange melancholy, he barely spoke, ate or went out and he showed no signs whatsoever that he was willing to settle down with a nice girl from a respectable family. Lucius was beginning to fear that he had irrevocably lost the boy he had raised with so much care, and with him a chance of ever securing the future and survival of his family line.

And then a near miracle: out of despair he had made him enrol at school to formally complete his education – and for Salazaar's sake to get him out into the world, if only into an institution as unworthy as Hogwarts! – and the boy that returned to him every weekend was nearly radiant with bizarre sort of joy Lucius had never known him to glow with even before the war! He was starry-eyed and sometimes smiling distractedly for no reason as if there was something going on in his head that was making him blush with joy - and above all, there was some languid satisfaction about him that needed no explanation and secretly, Lucius was very pleased. If his lovely boy was getting some... carnal treatment, that could only work to his advantage.

And then another sudden change: utter despair, his pale, ill-looking son hanging about the Manor a mere ghost of himself, barely breathing, never again smiling, nearly transparent with sickly, other-worldly glow that scared Lucius to the bone, for it was all too reminiscent of that time Draco was forced to spend the summer amidst the blood-thirsty Death Eaters and their merciless Dark Lord, and barely survived the ordeal. But it seemed as if it was just another one of his son's whims, perhaps indeed a product of the cheerless Autumn weather, because from one day to another his son's disposition had once again taken a turn for the better. Perhaps he was no longer as starry-eyed as before, and his smile was more resigned that dreamy, but the cat-like languidness was back and the return of his son's good temper had a most wonderful side-effect: finally the boy saw the error of his ways and agreed to take on his responsibilities as the next in the Malfoy line. No one rejoiced more sincerely than Lucius and for that purpose alone he was willing to deal with Draco's terribly capricious behaviour when it finally came to picking a bride.

But ever since he had learned of having to deal with _a Weasley_ under his roof, and not just temporarily, Lucius's patience also began to run thin. And it didn't help one bit that the groom-to-be was becoming increasingly more morose and depressed and showed absolutely no enthusiasm whatsoever regarding his status of a newly-wed. Lucius almost dreaded the next few moments when Draco was to join him in the richly-decorated place of the ceremony, filled with joyful anticipation of a small army of guests – and looking every bit as if he was attending a funeral rather than his own wedding. Even Lucius was not thick-skinned enough to be able to completely ignore the soon-to-be charged atmosphere, the inevitable confusion and the frowns of the bride's relatives that were certain to come. Still, it had to be done, he had to go through with it, though he would be lying to himself if he said he had never imagined this day to be much different!

And just because he was in a foul mood, Lucius found it exceedingly hard to get out of his skin. Upon the view of Draco's dressing room – finally! - his relief and his acid hatred blended into a dangerous mixture and he hissed at the despised redhead at his side:

“Finally! I certainly hope no one saw us walking side by side, I cannot possibly fathom a plausible excuse for that! You best behave today, you hear me?! I don't know what manners that father of yours had taught you, if any, but...”

But he never made it farther then that. The Weasley boy stopped abruptly and seemed to have suddenly grown by another head as he stretched himself to full height. The fierce look in sapphire eyes made Lucius's mouth go dry and his fingers reflexively slipped towards his wand as he realized he might just have made a very grave mistake. Suddenly his anxiety no longer rotated around “ _if the boy leaves_ ”, but more in the direction of “ _if the boy attacks_ ” as the blue eyes nearly drilled a hole into his skull with their merciless intensity and he had just vividly remembered why he hated Arthur so much: he could undress a person to their bare soul with his freakish burning eyes and it had always made Lucius squirm when someone penetrated his armour of haughtiness and polite, ice cold disdain and came close to seeing the weak, petty man he was underneath.

And the boy's list of unusual talents must have included legilimency, because he suddenly opened his mouth and asked, without reservations and without ever removing his blasted eyes from Lucius's face, about the very thing that was on Lucius's mind:

“Why do you hate my father so much? Why him? There are other pure-bloods out there that don't support your cause of pure-blood purity and privilege for the Sacred twenty-eight, but my father is a particular thorn-in-your-side, isn't he? Now, why would that be, hm? I believe I deserve to know if I'm to be on the receiving end of the venom you hold for him!”

And Lucius, of course, couldn't tell him the truth. He couldn't tell him that he had once, as a mere naive boy, considered himself a possible candidate for a husband of the older, but lusciously beautiful pure-blood by the name of Molly Prewett - and that Arthur found his wits and courage just in time to tread over this boyish dream before it could ever grow wings - and after that Molly would have none other. He could never say out loud that Arthur Weasley scared him, because he could not be controlled with money, promises of power and influence or what other there were of those lures Lucius knew very well how to use to his advantage. He couldn't tell him that the man confused him, for he cared nothing for prestige his blood status could have granted him, but choose to stand for equality that would make him lose all his privileges instead. He could not spill out to the boy that his father infuriated him because he knew how to turn even his greatest weaknesses – his family's unexpected fall to poverty and his mad love for all things Muggle, to name but a few – into his strengths and had made his life, and the life of his family, a success by simply sticking to his guns and never for once wavering in his persuasions. Deep down inside Lucius knew Arthur was everything he was not and the petty creature that he was, could not tolerate a better man.

He couldn't say any of these things, but fully alert how much was at stake he couldn't hope to pour out all the acid venom he held for the boy's father, so he merely seethed through the gritted teeth:

“What's it to you?! Your father and I are... incompatible, this should suffice!”

But suddenly the boy smiled, a most lustrous, brilliant smile one could imagine, and completely knocked the breath out of Lucius with that unexpected action; in fact it might have made him flinch more than it would if the redhead drew a wand – he absolutely _loathed_ those unpredictable Weasleyish whims!

“He doesn't hate you, you know?” he said in a smooth, almost creamy voice that sounded every bit as if he was laughing at him underneath. “My father doesn't hate you. True, he despises you, perhaps you even disgust him, but he doesn't hate you. I know my dad and I know he doesn't. And nor do I hate your son. I know better. I've learned from that blasted war. And for all it's worth – I don't think your son hates me either, not any more. So if that's what you tried to teach him, you've failed. Draco doesn't hate me... in fact, I think it might be quite the opposite.”

And those words hit Lucius like a punch to the stomach and he found himself unable to breathe. The implications, as he stared into the wild, victoriously smiling eyes of Ron Weasley, were unfathomable and he couldn't... he just couldn't... -

In that moment the door had opened and Narcissa Malfoy stuck her head out, breathing a sigh of relief at the sight of the tall redhead casually smirking at her nearly petrified husband:

“It is time,” she said and the redhead smiled at her, an entirely different, breath-taking smile of happiness – when he should have had nothing to be happy about! - and as he entered, Narcissa went on to say something to the boys about having to make sense of things in the next ten minutes because her son needed to be by his father's side, but it all went completely over Lucius's head as he stared, numb and flabbergasted at the dreadful realization of what this all _could_ mean – but it couldn't, it just _couldn't_ be...

“Make him glow, Ronald,” was the last thing he had heard her say in an unusually soft tone, before she closed the door and turned towards him, all her usual elegant, business self. At the sight of his greyish face and unhinged mouth he simply smiled beatifically and said pleasantly:

“You wanted your son happily married – and now he will be. Happy and married. You have taught me an important lesson, Lucius Malfoy: nothing ever comes without a price. And price for Draco's marriage and the future heir of your family line was love – so I made sure he got it. Not in the form you quite imagined it to be or would ever approve of, but it shouldn't be too much of a price to pay for all your hopes and dreams coming true. And for as long as he is happy, he will continue to do our bidding and you will not say a word, Lucius Malfoy, not a single one. Or stand to lose everything to your arrogance and irrational hatred. I'm sure your ancestors would approve. _Hardly_. So for once, eat it up and rejoice – this day is for you, more than it is for any of us. I will not have you mope about and ruin everything. Come, we have a ceremony to attend, your only son is getting married and the guests must be impatient.”

She calmly took his arm underneath hers and pulled him gently behind her, so no one could tell she was actually leading him. And Lucius went. For once feeling completely defeated and played empty.

~

“It's time, babe...”

Ron gently kissed the top of the head of his lover, but the groom-to-be merely pushed his blond head even deeper into the warm, broad chest and murmured:

“Just a second longer... another moment... Merlin, this feels good... so good to have you here, Ron...”

“It's good to be here, love...” Ron smiled into the silken hair and he meant every word of it. “This way it's a new beginning for both of us. But we mustn't delay any longer, precious... Someone might come looking for us. Besides - your mother said ten minutes and we mustn't let her down, not after all she had done for us. They're all waiting for you, gorgeous, and it's time to knock them all off their feet. Just look at you, look how stunning you are!”

And indeed he was. Just being next to Ron completely transformed the blond. The colour returned to his cheeks, his eyes were glowing like a set of stars with joy and love and the way he clung to Ron made it increasingly hard to let go at all... But the redhead needed to complete his part of the deal he had made with Narcissa Malfoy and Ron was a Gryffindor to the bone – he wasn't going to back off, even if he could; after all, they both owed that woman every bit of happiness they were going to get. He hadn't managed the courage yet to tell Draco that their time together had an expiry date, that one day, eventually, he would have to leave him to be with Harry, but he didn't have the heart to ruin his happiness on this day and besides – it was going to be at least a decade before this debt was due.

Today he needed to pay a different kind of dues: he promised Narcissa to deliver her son to the altar, and as much as he was tempted to stay in this little sanctuary, where they were allowed to be who they really were, he was not free to do so. Thanks to Draco's mother he will from now on have time enough to spend with his lover and he meant to thank her properly, he meant to make Draco look as if he was indeed making his own dream come true as well.

Therefore he pulled him as close as he could, his hand casually sliding onto his lover's pert arse and squeezing gently, enticingly, just to give him something to think about. When he heard his breath hitch, he knew he got his attention.

“Nervous?” he murmured softly into his ear and casually pressed a tender kiss right on top of his ear.

“Merlin, Ron...” Draco all but moaned and the rest of his thoughts drowned in a long, breath-taking kiss that melted his knees and left him with a swimming head and a ridiculously blissful smile. And Ron smiled one of those dark, promising smiles straight from those brilliant blue orbs and kissed him once more next to his ear, soft breath of his whisper sending shivers down his spine:

“How about I distract you a little, hm? Give you something else to think about, love... I tell you what, precious.... You do this, and you do it right – do it for your mother, who gave us a chance to be together, do it for us – cause this is our day as well, isn't it, my love? - and if you make it good for me, I promise... I _promise,_ Malfoy, I'll find a way to make this day special for us by the time the clock strikes midnight... celebrate a little... spoil my beautiful baby... get on my knees and suck you slowly until you're empty of that beautiful heavy load, gorgeous... save it for me, love, save every last drop, I want to make you come so hard, you'll fucking drown in your own come... I'll find a way to give it to you, Gryffindor promise, babe... So how about you get this sinfully beautiful arse going now, you spoilt little brat, an army of people is waiting... and don't forget, love... I'm right behind you, with you, every step of the way, yeah?”

“Ron... you idiot... Gods... how am I supposed to... Weasley, dammit, if we're going to do this for any length of time, I seriously need to teach you some manners... not to mention some common sense!” Draco sighed, but his despair was only halfway there, because he couldn't quite chase a smile from his lips even if he tried. “You can't turn a man on like this and then expect him to walk straight... Let alone to walk out there to be perused by a small million of people who expect perfection, not this dishevelled, crazy-eyed... oh, you!”

He stole another wistful kiss, full of future promises, then straightened himself up with resignation and determination of a true Malfoy and spoke in a tone that would give his father a run for his money:

“Weasley, follow me. Let's do this!” And then he added in a softer tone of his lover, not many people were familiar with: “And don't you dare stay a single step behind, Ron, I can't do this right without you.”

 

 


	50. Take me to Church 2/4 - Under the surface

 

“ _Well, the scenery is colourful,_ _  
__But the paint is so damn thin...”_

 Jethro Tull, No rehearsal

 

 

Draco Malfoy's wedding was always going to be a first-page news, but with none other than Ron Weasley, one of the so-called Holy Trinity and a once open adversary to the groom, walking close behind him down the aisle towards the uncommonly pale Lucius Malfoy, the _“wedding of the century_ ” was also a first-class scandal. Skeeter's eyes almost fell out of their sockets at the shocking sight and her infamous quill began scribbling so fast it finally broke, making her barely stifle a loud curse. What she tried to write about was anyone's guess, because even she would be hard pressed to find a fault with the groom that looked absolutely radiant in his impeccable attire.

A soft, almost dreamy smile that would make any girl swoon, made the delicate features of his face even more appealing and his grey eyes were shining with a silver light the public had hardly ever had a chance to see before. His very walk was so light it made him look as if he was almost floating an inch above the ground. Ron was walking behind him with a slow, solid step, the silken red hair perfectly plaited and his brilliant blue eyes alert as if he was indeed on a lookout for a potential enemy in the crowd, while his face displayed a small proud smile that spoke - beyond any doubt - of his right to be here, attending the wedding of his once-enemy.    

“ _The wizarding world has never seen_ _ **Draco Malfoy**_ _as he was on the morning of his wedding,”_ the Magical Wedding magazine reported the following day. _“The groom was absolutely stunning in his traditional black attire with daring silver-green lining and bold details, which is no less than everyone who anticipated “the wedding of the century”, expected him to be. Hardly any shock there. But what_ _ **did**_ _come as a pleasant surprise to all who were granted a much desired invitation, was how very well settled the young heir of the Malfoy family seemed to have become into his new role of a husband. He positively radiated happiness - as hard as it was for the author of this article to imagine the sight! - and he is very obviously head over heels in love. It seems that the lovely and graceful_ _ **Astoria Malfoy, née Greengrass**_ _, has managed to transform a young man, once known for his flirty demeanour, into a faithful suitor-gone-husband, and the scandalously long kiss they shared after the knot was tied could turn any sceptic into a believer. However, the newly-weds spent the rest of their wedding ceremony and the reception that followed, carefully within the borders of appropriate behaviour as the tradition dictates and are clearly saving further exchange of their mutual affection for more private moments._

 _But perhaps an even a bigger surprise than Draco Malfoy surrendering his playboyish ways in the space of less than half a year to a relatively unknown belle with a perfect pure-blood pedigree but little presence in the world of wizarding elite (for more on Dame Astoria, her personal history and her breath-taking attire see Page 3), was the shocking attendance of none other than_ _**Ronald Weasley** _ _at the wedding ceremony! Indeed, this is_ _**not** _ _a printing error, as much as the esteemed reader might be inclined to believe! The most reclusive member of the Holy Trinity, as the wizarding community came to call the original trio who bravely stood up to the Dark Lord as a mere teenagers, walked smiling behind the man who was once destined to be his enemy, but there was none of the animosity in the air, while a wonderfully tall and absolutely stunning youngest_ _**son of deputy Minister Arthur Weasley** _ _approached the altar close on the heels of a pleased-looking groom. In a true spirit of his role in the recent wizarding war, he might have even saved this wedding by salvaging what could have been a dreadfully embarrassing situation of misplaced rings (for more detail, see the photographic report with comment below)._

 _Even though the Weasleys and the Malfoys remain tight-lipped regarding Ronald Weasley's involvement and role at the wedding (and Weasley's_ _**best friend Harry Potter** _ _was, as usual, unavailable for comment), it was clear that the young man came invited and in every way welcome. In fact, Draco Malfoy took the effort of personally introducing Weasley to the most prominent of his guests as his “business partner” and the young war-hero seemed to be on especially good terms with the groom's mother, Lady Malfoy, with whom he was noted to be conversing vivaciously on numerous occasions throughout the reception. (For full feature on Ronald Weasley, his humble beginnings, his rise to fame, his unwavering yet mysterious friendship with the Saviour himself and the possible implications of his participation at the Malfoy wedding, turn to Pages 4-6.)_

But Ron cared nothing for the wave of excited murmur that followed him behind as he walked past the astonished guests, some gawping openly at the unexpected celebrity in their midst. He hardly noticed the gasps of the ladies - _“Oh, my, is that him??”, “Merlin, he is so young!”, “Dear god, he's tall... and would you look at those eyes!”,“Potter, who?! Look at this beau!” “I never knew he was so gorgeous! Why is there never anything on him in the newspapers!?” “What is he doing here?!”_ \- and he cared little for the stir he caused among the men, many of them skilled politicians that immediately began pondering upon the advantages of making acquaintances with Harry Potter's best friend and the son of the deputy Minister.

He couldn't even bring himself to be bothered by the icy, stormy looks stone-faced Lucius Malfoy was sending him down the aisle. He knew he should be bothered, he knew he was supposed to care... but not today. Lucius just faded into the background like the rest of them – he only had eyes for Draco this morning. His lover was everything anyone could ever hope for. Ron could hardly believe someone so elegant, so at home in all this prestige, so beautiful, so radiant, so... _perfect_ could ever give him the time of day, yet as soon as Draco reached his father, he turned around to face the crowd and his eyes immediately sought him out and he gave him the most breath-taking, brilliant smile that sent a surprised gasp around the crowd and just shattered and shot his heart up all in one. He couldn't help to mirror it himself and Malfoy Senior could go and choke on his bile for all he cared!

Indeed Lucius Malfoy grow even paler and his hand twitched as if he was about to act in the face of such insolence, but what probably saved that particular wedding were the first sounds of the traditional melody that announced the bride approaching down the aisle in the company of her father - and some colour finally returned to Lucius's face. With some difficulty he plastered on a pleased expression, all fake around the edges, but even his face relaxed a little when Draco sent his bride a small encouraging smile.

~

For the young, graceful Astoria this was a dream come true, the one she never expected to get. She was the younger one of two daughters, shipped off to the relative safety on the continent as soon as there was a whisper of the Dark Lord returning; so what really left a mark on her life, was not the war, but the fact that she was always second to her sister Daphne in everything she did or was. She could never outdo Daphne in her sharp Slytherin wit, so she eventually stopped trying and became comfortable with her kinder, gentler self. She didn't have Daphne's ambition nor her aggressiveness, and though she was naturally poised, she wasn't actively working on improving her looks to perfection. Her beauty was not as proclaimed and accentuated as that of her sister, but it was one of a more subtle nature, the beauty of smooth, porcelain skin, graceful figure, silken hair and kind eyes. She knew she could never hope to gain herself a husband of her own choice and liking and she had resigned herself to the faith of having her husband picked by her parents, who would do so to maintain their pureblood status – the one she was hard-wired to believe was the biggest family asset – and to secure her future with a husband who could provide for her.

But that didn't stop young Astoria from dreaming, no parental authority could take her fantasy and her youthful fancy away. While she was still on the continent, she was eagerly reading everything and anything that had to do with her beloved wizarding England in the clutches of secret war and her parents would be shocked if they could read her mind, full of romanticized imagery of defying rebels against the Dark Lord and a far cry from what she was supposed to be hoping for. She fancied a different hero every week – Harry Potter among the first, like any other teenage girl would, but that fancy was of a short breath, when she found out he was short and a half-blood. She couldn't see herself with someone shorter than herself as she was quite tall for a girl, even taller than Daphne; and though she secretly cared nothing for the affairs of blood-purity, she knew that her parents would never let her marry anyone whose pure-blood pedigree didn't go all the way back to the time of the great Salazaar himself. No, this was one dream best given up.

Her fancy of Ron Weasley was always on shaky feet, based solely on the information that he was a proper pure-blood, thus eligible, wonderfully tall and had quite a temper – something she secretly admired, perhaps even surprisingly so for a timid person she was. But the grainy photos in the wizarding publications didn't give her imagination much to go on and the last nail in the coffin of her affection for the redhead was the rumour that himself and the last member of the Holy Trinity, a Muggle-born witch by the name of Hermione Granger, were apparently an item – and Astoria let go of that particular dream up without much struggle and regret.

And then one day, she saw him. Draco Malfoy, the heir of the most prominent wizarding family in England, as pure-blood as it got and a Slytherin peer of her sister Daphne – and all she ever talked about when she came home for holidays – as well as a tragically held hostage of the Dark Lord – at least that's how that particular publication that had no official Ministry approval and confirmation, had led their readership to believe. The very fact that he was a victim of his parents' ambition – something she could relate to very well – had her interested in the boy, but it was the big grey eyes on a pretty patrician face, with a solemn look of someone who was forced to grow up too fast, that captivated her imagination and, as she liked to think, her heart.

Of course she knew it was hopeless, but whenever she had overheard her parents discussing possible candidates for her to marry, she compared them all to Draco Malfoy – and they had all inevitably came up short. Upon her return to England she had eagerly collected every piece of information she could gather upon the mysterious young man who was never seen with the same female companion twice, but though she envied his companions – all of them beautiful, available and appropriate – she also found strange comfort in the thought that he had not yet found his match among them.

And then – a miracle. The Malfoys were “hiring”, as her mother put it excitedly and without much bluffing. One glamorous ball after another indicated that someone in the Malfoy family clearly decided that the family needed an heir and all the eligible young ladies from pure-blood families went berserk. Astoria had never seen her parents – well, her mother in particular – spend quite so much of the rapidly disappearing family assets on making Daphne as attractive and stunning as she always believed herself to be. Astoria had shyly asked for a permission to attend an event or two herself, but her mother had merely waved her away with: “ _Don't be ridiculous, darling, we can't possibly afford another appropriate attire at this point... perhaps another time._ ”

Only after one too many receptions ending in Daphne's crushed hopes and hysterical tears, when it became clear, that Draco Malfoy was no more interested in her as he was in school and that they might have to move on and accept their loses, Astoria's father, who took pity on his little girl, persuaded his wife that perhaps they could give their youngest daughter a chance to experience the glamorous life of the wizarding elite before they shipped her off to a prearranged marriage.

Not much care was paid to her evening gown and the accessories as it was to be Daphne's last attempt to capture the fancy of the young man she practically worshipped ever since they were class-mates. So Astoria went to the ball without any burden of expectation, just to see him, her idolized prince with hair and eyes made of moonlight, to see him with her own eyes as she had never seen him before and perhaps to get a chance to express her humble appreciation. Never in a million dreams did she expect to catch his eyes across the hallway the way she did – and it was all a fairy-tale from that moment on. He came to greet her, spoke to her kindly, laughed at her innocent observations and her fresh attempts at humour, held her gently through every dance of the ball and never looked at another girl that evening. He had described himself as “ _taken_ ” for the night and treated her like a queen, filling her head with impossible dreams to the brim – and making every single one come true in the course of the months that followed.

She didn't know how could anyone describe him as cold and cruel – he was always exceptionally courteous and kind towards herself, he would listen to her, ask her opinion and smile at her, albeit with a tiny edge of sadness that sometimes clang to his behaviour. Perhaps still a bit mysterious and not quite so affectionate as she would have him – but surely, that was due to the elaborate rules of pure-blood courting etiquette - he was a proper knight on the white horse for her mesmerized self and she could not imagine that in a few short moments she would be his wife, his one and only for the rest of their lives. It couldn't come fast enough as far as she was concerned. She was almost tempted to hurry down the aisle to find herself by his side as soon as possible, as if she was still unable to fathom that he would be hers to keep and wasn't going to fly away like a beautiful, glamorous, impossible bird made of dreams, but it was the memory of Daphne's last acid hiss _“I hope you fall and ruin your dress – and the wedding, you little impostor!”_ that kept gait graceful and steady.

She saw his small, encouraging smile and she couldn't help but to return it with a nervous grin of her own – surely something her Maman would scold her for later, but she could hardly stop herself, she was just too jittery and to overwhelmed with excitement. When she was finally close enough to take a hold of his hand, which he had put out gracefully, her fingers were shaking in anticipation and the feeling of a hundred pairs of eyes on her back, watching her every move, but as soon as his fingers closed around her hand, long and elegant and surprisingly strong, she relaxed. The firm squeeze, assuring her everything was going to be alright, because she was with him and she would become his in a few short moments, had given her the confidence she never knew before. She straightened herself up to her full height – something she was always a bit apprehensive about – and looked at him shyly to thank him with a nod of her head.

He accepted her silent “ _thank you_ ” gracefully, only with a flutter of his long eyelashes, and she noticed the pink tinge of his high cheeks and an astonishing almost dreamy light in his eyes she had never seen before. For a moment his eyes wandered somewhere towards the empty space behind her back, as if he was afraid to look at her face, and the he smiled; he smiled a smile so soft and tender her heart almost stopped in awe and a rush of affection. He loved her, she knew he did, and she was going to love him back with all her heart and their lives would be perfect from this day on.

She wanted to touch his face and finally kiss him on those pale soft lips – they hadn't done that before, she only knew they were as soft as they seemed through a butterfly kiss he would press on her cheek every time they saw each other since their engagement became public – but even if the etiquette allowed it, the expression on the face of his father, the haughty and menacing Lucius Malfoy would wipe every desire for any kind of spontaneous trespassing out of her mind. He always scared her - there was just something in his cold grey eyes that made her skin crawl – but today the man looked even more vicious than usual. Clearly this wedding was not his idea, or perhaps she was not his image of a perfect bride for his precious heir, because his expression was an image of frozen livid disgust and amidst her moments of happiness and glory she shuddered at the thought that she would have to share any portion of her life with him.

But luckily, he was not looking directly at her. His eyes were set somewhere at the space behind her shoulders, at exactly the same spot her husband's had been a moment ago when he smiled so lovingly and she was tempted to turn around to see if there was something there, behind her back, that occupied the attention of both Malfoy men and inspired such contrasting emotions. But before she could act on her impulse, the Wizengamot official began reciting the standard phrases of the wedding ritual and she promptly forgot such foolish whims. It was a very boring ritual all in all, hundreds of years old and barely understandable, but none of her attention was required right up until the very end. So she entertained herself by watching her husband-to-be from close proximity and her heart fluttered in her chest at the thought that she would be able to do so whenever she chose from now on.

He was uncommonly handsome for a man up close. His patrician features were delicate and sharply defined and his complexion flawless; his singular white-blond hair was glossy and pulled back in a plait that looked as if it was meant to be perfect, yet something had gotten in a way of strict perfection and the loose strands of hair gave his face softness, that was even more accentuated by the gentle curve of his mouth and that singular pearly glow in his grey eyes. He had never seen his eyes like this. She had known them to be intelligent, musing, sparkling with interest or – on rare occasions, as hard as colourless diamonds, but she had never before seen them glow silver and as deep as a set of bottomless ponds. He was beyond handsome; he was beautiful in the way only fairy-tale princes were meant to be beautiful.

And those exquisite eyes were not really looking at her – no, she supposed that would be weird, as she was already staring at him like love-struck fool and that kind of lovey-dovey eye contact would be just too plebeian for one Draco Malfoy. Instead, those mesmerising grey orbs were persistently set to that spot behind her back and if it wasn't for that enchanting silver glimmer and a strange focus in his eyes, she would have assumed he was simply trying to weather his boredom and his impatience during the dull ceremony. He glanced at her every once in a while almost nervously, as if he was checking if she was still there and they would exchange a tiny smile that warmed her heart up and made her feel as if they were already allies, them against the world.  

But then he would look at the floor almost as if he was trying to keep his composure, his fingers would briefly touch an unusually plain silver necklace with something that looked like a small _La Tour Eiffel_ pendant, positioned on top of his robes, and when his eyes went up next they were once again drawn to that place just slightly off her face and the grey orbs got all big and magical, the silver glow was back and they were almost... greedy. In fact, they were so intense in their need to have, to own and to belong, that they made her shiver: would he look at her like that once she was his? She'd like that, she realized, she'd like that very much. Except... she somehow got the feeling that he was actually looking _at_ someone behind her back like that, looking at them with all that hunger and yearning and just a tinge of despair and suddenly all her insecurities were back with a vengeance.

He wouldn't do that to her, would he? Marry her and look at another person like that... Why wouldn't he marry that person in the first place, then; the whole world was his playground, he could have chosen any girl he liked! She grew increasingly curious and anxious as to what or who it was there, behind her, that kept his unwavering attention, but at that moment the official's dull voice went silent and as he turned towards them, she knew it was time.

They turned around halfway to face each other as the tradition dictated and suddenly she was nearly faint with dizzying expectation. Only the rings now and the vows and that would be it, she would forever be tied to Draco Malfoy and her heart fluttered wildly somewhere in her throat at the thought. But then she caught a face of her future father-in-law with her peripheral vision and it looked strangely distraught, almost ashen grey, and she remembered that he was the one who was supposed to hand them the rings, that this was his role, the whole point of him standing there. Yet Lucius Malfoy didn't seem to be able to produce them and his long fingers ran across his robes like nervous spiders, discretely trying to feel every fold in them.

But as Draco couldn't see his father, standing behind him, he remained calm and waited with a face that might as well be carved from marble for the procedure to continue. The sudden change in his demeanor was therefore even more proclaimed: from one moment to the other his eyes flew up, his body tensed and his breath hitched. Astoria had felt the presence behind her before she actually saw it. He appeared behind her back, as if out of the thin air, and handed Draco a tiny open box with the beautifully adorned white-gold wedding rings, a heirloom of the Malfoy family for centuries - and smiled at him darkly. But Astoria barely noticed the rings, her attention has been scattered to bits by a million other things.

The man. He was magnificent. Impossibly tall, with hair as red as the setting sun and just about as lustrous in its silken glow, crawling like a red snake trapped in a thick plait down his back. The extraordinarily pretty face with about a million adorable freckles trailing across an aquiline nose looked vaguely familiar, yet she was dead certain she had never seen this particular man before, she would have been sure to remember him.

His smile. The mouth it appeared on was soft and generous, almost plush, and looked every bit made for gentle kissing, though his smile was anything but gentle. It was... oh, she didn't even have a word for it, but there was something infernal about it, almost predatory, it was dark and provoking, promising and enticing all in one, and it disappeared somewhere into his eyes – and those eyes...

Those eyes were the most brilliant, deepest blue Astoria had ever seen. They were set firmly on her husband-to-be and the look in them was indescribable. There was passion there, mixed with the same some sort of hunger he had seen reflect in the blond's eyes just moments before, but there was also deep hurt at the bottom of those magical blue orbs and some sort of a silent storm inside them was tearing the man by her side apart, even from the distance between them: it was just a flash of emotion across Draco's beautiful patrician face and it was gone, but it struck her like a lightning bolt what terrible power this stranger held over her future husband. In that split second his icy shell came undone like it was hit by a spell and the yearning in his eyes was out in the open and it was horrible, raw and screaming, almost corporeal - and it hit her like a blunt fist to the stomach, that it was not directed at her.  

And then there was the touch. When Astoria played the scenery in front of her eyes later, she figured out it must have all happened in the space mere seconds – yet when she was there, present, it seemed to have been stretched out much longer, as if someone had slowed down her life and her vision to allow her to catch every single detail. Sometime during that endless stretch of time the redhead extended his arm to hand Draco the rings and inevitably, their fingers touched briefly. And her groom shuddered from head to toe. The connection between them was so powerful, she nearly felt shock-wave of the magic herself and when the stranger turned around quietly, without saying a word, she was not even surprised to see an identical humble silver necklace hanging around his neck. They were connected, somehow they had to be, there was no denying it, and the charge between them made her hair stand on ends as if she had just found herself in the face of danger she could not put her finger on and she could not hope to defeat.

Then the redhead looked at her with serious, inquisitive eyes, and she almost drowned in a sea of blue, suddenly feeling small and insignificant in front of the imposing stranger – but then he gave her the tiniest of smiles, coming more from those incredible eyes than the warm mouth, and there was sadness in that smile, perhaps even a tad of pity, but also kindness beyond compare and she somehow knew she had met someone exceptional and incredibly important. Then he simply walked past her and disappeared from her vision and if it wasn't for the rings resting in the open palm of Draco's hand for a second, before he handed them to the official, once again stone-faced, she would have thought him merely a figment of her imagination. But her insides were all in upheaval and she nearly forgot that she was still standing in front of the altar.

He had only delivered the rings, she tried to tell herself in a desperate attempt to calm herself down. Draco's father must have misplaced them somehow and this man must have found them and brought them forward and they were to proceed as normal, an embarrassment had been avoided and nothing crucial had happened. He had merely delivered the rings. _Nothing_ happened.

But deep down in her ravaged soul she knew something _had_ happened, something colossal and significant, something that changed everything, but her mind was too full of scrambled thoughts to try and make sense of it all. She just couldn't, couldn't wrap her mind around what it could all _mean_. But then she felt the blond in front of her take her hands into his and she looked into his silver eyes miserably and was shocked to find them smiling.

“ _Your vows,_ ” he mouthed quietly and suddenly she realized flabbergasted that they were all waiting for her in silence to say the words. She was instantly flushed with embarrassment and thought in panic that she had forgotten them, didn't have a clue what she was supposed to say, and - _ohdeargod,_ Maman was going to flay her alive if she screwed that up and Daphne was never going to stop mocking her for it and she could almost feel the anger of Malfoy Senior breathing down her neck and -

The feeling of calm and composure washed down her body almost as suddenly as panic did and her eyes instinctively followed the direction from which she felt the flare of wandless magic emerge and the redhaired man smiled at her yet again, this time encouragingly. And somehow, inexplicably, she felt better. He approved, he wanted her to say the vows, it was all going to be alright. How it had come to mean something what the redhead thought of them getting married, was beyond her, but somehow it meant everything. And a new wave of spite and self-confidence flooded her now that she was calm. Merlin be praised, she had come this far, she had beaten all the odds and she was _not_ going to fail now! She looked at her smiling groom with renewed decisiveness and when she opened her mouth to say the words, her voice was clear and calm and her vow came out loud and perfect to the point that she surprised herself with it:

“I, Astoria Greengrass, take thee, Draco Lucius Malfoy to be my wedded Husband...”, “to have and to hold...”, “for better for worse...”, “to love, cherish and to obey so long as we both on earth shall live.”

And when she pushed a ring onto his finger and he had smiled at her warmly, she knew she had done alright and a feeling of pride and happiness, that hit her, barely left her standing still. She wanted it to be over already, she wanted to kiss him and tell him how foolishly frightened she had become of losing him, she wanted to admire her own beautiful, intricate ring on her finger at long last and she wanted to dance the rest of the day away in his arms. She felt his wondrous silver eyes peruse her almost thoughtfully, as if he was taking her measure, before he took a ring that was to be hers between his fingers and spoke calmly, with his eyes still set firmly onto her face:

“I, Draco Lucius Malfoy, take thee Astoria Greengrass, to be my wedded Wife...” “to have and to hold...”, “for better for worse...”, “to cherish and to respect so long as we both on earth shall live.” And suddenly his eyes were no longer on her face, but they shifted imperceptibly into the distance and with a sinking heart she realized she now knew where to, as he added firmly, simply: “I will love you to the day I die.”

The crowd had erupted with a loud applause and a few unbecoming cheers as he finally pushed a ring onto her hand with long, calm fingers, and she realized they must be cheering to an unexpected and incredibly romantic confession of love that had just one little flaw no one noticed - it was not meant for her. She just stood there, nearly stunned, as all the scenery that took place this morning played in her head in a completely new light, but the understanding, _what_ it had all meant in the end, came too late and she was now married to Draco Malfoy, a man who promised to cherish and respect her, but didn't have a heart to give her. He had promised to love someone else under her very eyes and she realized she must have been their only witness. And from here on, she had no idea what she should do.

The long cold fingers were suddenly on her cheek as he stroked it gently and when her eyes flew to his face for guidance, she realized they were full of tears. But he merely smiled, a cruel, kind smile, unaware of the wounds it was cutting, and he murmured quietly, clearly pleased:

“Good girl. You've done well, my lady. Now to that kiss everyone expect and this will be over soon.”

And she experienced for the first time, what she already knew, but had never really understood - that the Malfoys took what was theirs to have with no questions asked, without bothering to seek permission. The long narrow palm of his hand had slipped from her cheek into the back of her head and he pulled her close, with a gesture that was gentle and yet allowed for no objection and suddenly his mouth was on hers, just as soft as she imagined it to be and he kissed her... kissed her with unforgivable tenderness and shocking sweetness... and kept on kissing her long, incredibly, unimaginably long, as if his heavenly lips were begging acquiescence he was unable to utter, until her mouth gave in and opened like the petals of a rose and she gave him her heart... And Draco Malfoy had her fall in love with him just like that; irrevocably, in earnest, tragically, for life; cruelly taking everything with his sweet, treacherous mouth.

The kiss finished when there were catcalls and when she was lost in him already; and when he finally pulled away, she wasn't even sure where she was anymore and the room seemed to be spinning. He smiled at her from up close and whispered softly:

“See... that wasn't so bad, was it?”

And when she shook her head, still completely under his spell, he smiled rather smugly once again, quietly murmured something like “ _You're going to make a wonderful wife_ ” and took her hand.

“Do you love me?” she suddenly whispered out frantically and stopped him dead in his track, but she didn't really care, because she needed his answer here and now, because somehow, it was important, what and how he was going to say it... even if she already knew the truth. He looked at her, one of those long, thoughtful perusals that seemed to be his way of estimating people and she barely held her own under those deep, grey eyes.

“Does it matter?” he asked quietly and surprisingly gently, and when she nodded quickly, before she was tempted to let it go, he let out a silent, deep sigh, took hold of her other hand and looked her straight in the eyes:

“You're a Malfoy now, I suppose you can take it...” he spoke calmly, but there was a hint of sadness in his voice. “The answer to your question is – no, I don't love you... but I suppose you already know that. You're as adorable and as perfect as a girl can be, but love is not about one person's perfection, it's about finding the echo of yourself in someone regardless of all of their faults – and together, you make something magical, together you are perfect. I found a person with many faults, more than most, but I've got faults of my own and that person... they complete me.

I cannot marry... that person, it is impossible. Like you, I was too late. But I could not bring my family to waste because I have foolishly fallen for someone I could never have, someone who could never give me a child the House of Malfoy deserves. It is important for me that you understand, why I picked you: you are a wonderful, beautiful person I would feel honoured to have as a mother to my son. It is of no fault of yours that I don't have a heart to give you anymore and even now, if you wish to be a free woman again and go looking for love in someone else's eyes, I am prepared to deal with the consequences of your decision. I... will not stand in your way, Astoria. I know I would have no one stand in my way when I found love. So if you wish, my lady...”

“But I've already found it!” she blurted out miserably, her eyes once again full of tears. “I know you could never love me... I suppose in my heart I never believed someone as dashing as you ever could..." she whispered sadly and let that girlish, shy dream of hers die quietly under those silver eyes. "But I love you,” she then spoke resolutely and looked deeply into those same eyes and felt the soul-crushing weight of her words. “My heart flutters in my chest when you look at me and when you kissed me earlier... if that's how not being loved by you feels like, I suppose I can stand it. I don't know where to go looking for better. Maybe with years, I will prove myself wrong, but for now, Draco Malfoy, I want none other. I would have liked to have a choice before today – but I think I would have still chosen to marry you. You're my dream come true. You picked me as your wife, you made me feel a million galleons worth, you saved me from the destiny of having to marry someone I couldn't stand, so... I'll be your wife. I will bear you a child you so desire and as a token of gratitude for your honesty, I will keep your secret. And all I want in return, is to be treated like your wife, with care and respect. I won't be neglected, I won't be laughed at... and I want to have my own voice, the voice I never had in my family. If you can't love me, at least give me that.”

And suddenly she was in his arms, she was submerged deeply into that wonderful, exotic scent that was as Draco Malfoy as it could be, and she melted into him when he kissed the the top of her head gently:

“You are just as wonderful... and just as extraordinary a woman as I could hope to get,” he whispered in her ear and there was some bitter emotion hiding behind his voice, almost if Draco Malfoy felt like crying but couldn't bear to share that much of himself with the world. “For all it's worth, if I had a heart to give you, it would have been yours. Gladly. You honour me by being my wife and I promise that you will be treated like a queen you are. I cannot love you the way you deserve to be loved, but apart from you and I and a precious few of other people who know my heart, no one would be able to say that the husband of Astoria Malfoy doesn't worship the ground she walks on. You will be my confidante, you will be the wife I can trust and lean on and in exchange, you will have everything I can give you and I promise to make you the envy of every witch in England!”

And he pushed her head up gently and kissed her once again, with the same heart-breaking gentleness and Malfoyian possessiveness as before and she stopped thinking all together, because this was just too wonderful and too... oh, she had no words for it, but her whole body was awake with the knowledge that she was being kissed by Draco Malfoy, the very man she came to love. And when his lips finally let go, she was disoriented and confused and... _god_ , did she want more! But he merely smiled at her, pleased with the result of his action, with the mixture of confusion, worship and lust he could read in her eyes.

“Come, there are people who wish to congratulate us, Lady Malfoy,” he said courteously and then gave her one of those thoughtful, side-way glances she was becoming accustomed to. “And there's someone... important, I want you to meet.”

She liked it, no, _loved_ it, how he had called her Lady Malfoy, as if he wanted to let her know she now belonged to him, and she _did_ so very much want to belong to him, be with him, kiss him once again and melt on his lips. He had literally kissed her soul away and she had never felt such a hot river of longing run down her body when she thought of his soft lips claiming hers once again, making her feel all soft at the knees and melted in her very centre. As he pulled her behind lightly, she finally began to take in some of the details around her; people laughing and applauding at her flushed face, Madame Malfoy looking uncommonly pleased, Maman all flushed and radiant and her father carefully trying to mask how very moved he had become during the ceremony of giving away his little girl.

But there were also those who seemed untouched by the general jolly spirit of the wedding. Lucius Malfoy looked absolutely murderous, his eyes travelling across the crowd as if he was looking for a victim to vent his anger on, but strangely enough they eventually stopped on his wife and he literally glared at her across the room with a look that could make a stone squeal for mercy. And Daphne – well, Daphne, her dismissive and proud sister, looked absolutely defeated for once, as if someone had just ruined her entire life. _Good_ , Astoria thought, and didn't even feel bad about it. Daphne had caused her more grief than all of the other people in her life combined, she could use a taste of bitter karma for once.

More happy faces – some of them she knew, some were complete strangers, and yet she couldn't see him, the one that mattered. She wondered at herself, how calm she was about meeting him – because she had no doubt this was the person Draco wanted to introduce her to. It was indeed strange that somehow she could not associate the image of the tall red-headed man with someone stealing her husband... nor with harming her altogether. How come she was not feeling insanely jealous of him or murderously angry at her husband, and how on earth wasn't she screaming in hysterics and drowning in tears, like the characters in the romance stories for young witches always did? She didn't know.

Was that still the residue of the calming charm he used on her when she was falling apart? Was it all down to the quiet feeling at the bottom of her heart that her husband could never love her the way she loved him? Or perhaps it was the fact that the red-headed man was the one who delivered the rings, that he was clearly there to make sure the wedding happened and somehow she couldn't bring herself to hate the idea of having to share Draco with him. He was there before her, if anyone it was her who was stealing Draco from him and she was just... _curious_ about him.

How much of her husband's true face will she see around him? Seeing the real Draco Malfoy was something that fascinated her, because she instinctively felt there were depths to the complicated person she had married, that she would never be able to see on her own. And who was he, to have discovered them, pulled the real Draco Malfoy out and made him fall in love with him?! She knew how thick was the smooth, icy shell of manners and all things appropriate her intriguing husband showed to the world – how in the world did _he_ \- a man, of all things, not even a woman! - ever break through every last of Draco's defences and found his heart?! She had the funniest thought that their love-story must have been something that deserved a novel of its own and she had no doubt whatsoever that it would be a heart-breaking one.

She simply wanted to see, perhaps to understand how he had done it – but he seemed to have disappeared from the sight and she felt it was beginning to bother the man by her side as well; Draco Malfoy was becoming increasingly more restless and she could almost feel his demeanour darken.

“Have no fear, everything seems to be in order,” a warm voice behind them spoke and the way her husband's fingers squeezed hers brutally, if only for the briefest of moments, she knew this voice could only be his, before she ever set eyes on him. Draco had gotten himself under control remarkably fast and only Astoria, holding his hand, could feel every muscle contract before the fingers relaxed and he turned around towards the voice casually, as if he had only just noticed the man.

“That beautiful serpent in green over there has been watching your wife, Malfoy, as if she wanted to bite her head off, but since I believe she might actually be her sister – it is Daphne, isn't it? - then, I reckon there's no actual danger coming from there, she was always hopeless with long-distance spells. But I wouldn't taste anything coming from her, at least not for the next decade or so - I remember her to be quite proficient when it came to brewing potions.”

The tone of the redhead's voice was casual, as if he was merely making a conversation, but it was his unforgettable eyes that were doing all the talking and Astoria wondered if her husband actually managed to catch a single word, because Draco Malfoy seemed to have become lost to the world. He probably didn't even realize what a poor job his face was doing in trying to hide his emotion, because his eyes just lit up like stars and his soft mouth curved up at the edges as if he was trying to put reins on a smile. Even the way he casually pushed a lock of his blond hair behind his ear curiously came across as flirtatious, when he was being watched by the tall redheaded man. The silence stretched just an odd moment too long, while the blue-grey bridge made between their eyes held and their eyes spoke to each other, but none of them seemed to noticed how quiet they've become and Astoria was just about to break the silence she found awkward and uncomfortable, when the redhead spoke softly, almost as if he was trying to wake up a sleeping child:

“Aren't you going to introduce me to your bride, Malfoy? You might as well, you know. It is your safety I'm in charge of, but I'm keeping you safe for her, at least that's the idea.”

And Draco Malfoy seemed to wake up from a reverie with a startle. His cheeks got an unusual pink tinge, almost as if he was... embarrassed or... excited and he mumbled something like “ _Shut up, you berk, no one teaches manners to a Malfoy!_ ” - which was of course shockingly rude, but it just brought a big lazy smile to the redhead's face. But she had no time to think about all the odd shades of their relationship, because at the same moment Draco's hand slipped around her waist gently and her husband spoke with calm, controlled voice:

“Weasley, may I introduce you to my lovely wife, Lady Astoria Malfoy. Astoria, meet Ronald Weasley, and yes, it's _that_ Ronald Weasley our son will have to learn about in the history books.”

Ronald Weasley!? _This_... was Ronald Weasley?! And just like that it hit her why he seemed familiar and she felt like a right fool for not having recognised him at once. But he was so, so _very different_ from the grainy pictures in the newspapers, even the moving pictures could never hope to capture how wonderfully tall he was, the fiery shade of his long silken hair and those piercing blue eyes...! But then she remembered _who_ he was and suddenly nothing made sense any more. He was Harry Potter's best friend, his family was allegedly in a centuries-long feud with the Malfoys, what was he even doing here?! Could she have gotten it wrong?

“We were once school-mates before he went on his mad and wild escapades with Potter,” her husband's voice interrupted her wondering, but even his voice seemed much different, somehow warmer and huskier around the redhead - no, she didn't get it wrong after all! This was Ron Weasley, a very much married Ron Weasley, a war-hero and Draco's old enemy – and her beautiful, classy husband was head over heels in love with him. Everything about him spoke of that. Just the way Draco looked at him... if anyone looked at her like this, she could die happy.

“I confess I put great deal of effort into making Weasley's school years a tad... uncomfortable,” the blond spoke again with a barely concealed smirk on his face, but upon a dry comment by the redhead “ _Uncomfortable, ha! More like a living hell!_ ” - his smirk changed into a fully-fledged grin, a brilliant charming smile that transformed his face and made her breathless with its beauty.

“Oh, come on, Weasley, hardly...! For your information, Astoria dearest, I regret to report that Weasley here was able to hold his own and then some, and I think I won't exaggerate much if I say that I pretty much got as good as I gave.”

“You bet!” the redhead mumbled and his long, auburn eyebrows shot up as in a challenge above the brilliant blue eyes: “My dad would never forgive me if I let you gain an square inch of ground! He'd throw me out of his will, he would, and I've had my eyes on that Ford Anglia since I was 12!”

“Always so... practical,” Astoria's husband smirked as if he was trying to be dismissive, but his eyes were telling a different story - under all the playful taunting she could feel the deep-running emotion that bound them together. “In any event, our paths crossed yet again last year, when we both enrolled to obtain our N.E.W.T.s and I'm pleased to report that the experience of knowing each other has been a much more... _pleasant_ one the second time around. To make a long story short, he heroically came to my assistance when I had run into a bit of a vengeful attitude at the good old school and once my mother found out about the incident, she was, understandably, impressed. And today he is here because he kindly agreed to my mother's request for enhanced security and took the charge of my personal safety upon his great, wide shoulders.”

By the time the blond finished he was barely keeping a smirk under wraps, but Ron had no need for such restraints – he flashed one of his lazy heart-stopping grins that had the power to light up the room and Astoria could feel her the muscles in her husband's hand tense around her waist at the sight of it. When the redhead spoke, the laughter was barely contained in his voice:

“Keep your sarcasm to yourself, Malfoy, you like my shoulders wide. After all, if something goes awry, these shoulders will be the one thing between you and the big bad world.”

The provoking, devilish look he paid him with these words was so charged, Astoria felt the tremor in her husband's hand almost as if Draco Malfoy barely managed to keep it in place. But now the redhead's brilliant blue eyes were suddenly on her and... Merlin, she had never seen a man with eyes more stunning up close.

“Madam, please excuse this terrible berk and for once I don't mean your husband. I'm very pleased to meet you,” he spoke warmly and politely picked up her offered hand to kiss it, as the habit dictated.

“Mr. Weasley... charmed... I'm sure...” she barely managed to breathe out in shock when her delicate hand nearly got lost in the grip of his large palm and the fingers underneath hers were calloused and strong, like she never knew any man's to be. Those plush lips of his were incredibly warm and every bit as gentle as they looked, and the warmth from his slow, carefully placed kiss seemed to spread all across her hand. She could feel the man's magnificent magic, radiant and all-encompassing, subtly seeping through her skin like a slow tide, captivating her senses, making her breathless. She understood now, how he had gotten to Draco, she felt the power that breathed through his very skin and it was unlike any magic she had ever encountered – she didn't feel like she could do anything to fight it, she was already under his spell.

She knew it from a sudden dark, dangerous tinge in her husband's eyes that he didn't like it, that there was something in that seemingly innocent and every bit appropriate kiss that got his blood boiling, because the fingers around her waist had suddenly turned into a vice and he was holding her so tight he was almost hurting her... but as soon as the redheaded man straightened up and smiled one of his languid, charged smiles that seemed to come out of his very eyes, Draco's fingers loosened up and she was able to breathe properly.

“Malfoy, this one is a treasure,” he spoke softly, but strangely enough, there seemed to be a thin layer of sadness over his brilliant smile. But it was gone as fast as it had appeared and his incredible smile got all naughty around the edges, when he turned his face towards her:

“Madam, where did you have a misfortune of stumbling upon this dreadful cynic by your side!? You shouldn't be marrying the first person that flatters you, you know, you're far too lovely for that!”

“Weasley, you incredible... argh! Would you kindly _stop_ slandering me in front of my wife and most obnoxiously _flirting_ with the bride with a subtlety of a drunk elephant!? Honestly, man... in the name of all things good and proper, we haven't been married five minutes! Now, tell me instead what did you think of my perf... of our wedding?” Draco Malfoy asked, clearly attempting to sound mortified, but he was unable to hide how much he enjoyed the exchange of friendly taunting with the redhead as he seemed quite unable to stop watching his every move with hungry, silver eyes.

“Flawless,” the redhead answered simply. “I bet your mother is beside herself with joy and it's obvious there are many people eager to congratulate you and your beautiful wife upon upgrading your status to a married couple. Perhaps you should have this tedious part over with, you know. I know from my own experience that no fun happens at the wedding before all the boring obligations are over – the banquet, the dance, the embarrassing after-party, it all takes place after you've heard every praise on the planet from the enthusiastic guests and accepted their tokens of appreciation, commonly known as the wedding presents, for getting a chance to be present at the wedding of the century.”

“Who's the cynic now!?” mumbled the blond, clearly unwilling to move forward to the part he just knew he was going to hate – after all, he was _not_ his father and standing still for hours with a fake smile plastered to his face, pretending to be courteous to people he barely knew, didn't come naturally to one Draco Malfoy. But suddenly he shivered to the bone when the unexpected warm hand brushed against the edge of his face, seemingly busy with trying to fix a lock of escaped hair behind his ear, but offering all kinds of comfort and promises if he was going to comply with playing his role and he knew he was going to do anything, any bloody thing, he needed to do to get his reward under that magical warm hand.

“Don't worry... I'll be right behind you, every step of the way, just like I promised, yeah?” the redhead said surprisingly gently and the blond wished his wife away, all this stupid travesty in white away, the wedding reception, the presents, the banquet, the millions of flowers and all the hundreds of guests, so he could be with his one and only and show him, truly and without a shred of doubt with whom his allegiance and his heart really lay. But it was not to be. Not today, not yet, and certainly not now.

“Alright, then...” he sighed miserably, resigned, and put his mask of a pleasant smile in place so perfectly, that no one would have a reason to doubt that Draco Malfoy was dying to present his beautiful bride to the world on a happiest day of his life, and accept the world's congratulations for it.

“Shall we?” he asked the timid, pretty little creature by his side, watching him with her big blue eyes and as she smiled to him shyly, adoringly and nodded eagerly, he knew he could have done a lot worse in terms of a wife. There was no fault to her; she was beautiful, innocent, sweet and kind, as well as properly behaved, from a good family and not without wit and intelligence. It was not her fault he couldn't love her. She was not to blame that he had no heart to give her, that he would leave everything she had to offer in a blink of an eye to be with him, the man who could make him liquefy by a single touch, who had the power to make him soft in the knees and insanely jealous with nothing but a warm, god-sexy smile and a pair of brilliant blue eyes. Somehow, after the ceremony the connection between them seemed even more solid and tangible than ever before. It was as if there was literally a piece of him missing when Ron was not around and just feeling his presence behind him made him feel safe and strangely... complete.

But his reverie was abruptly interrupted by the most uncivil bark that halted his step and made him pay a surprised look to Malfoy Senior who seemed to appear in front of them out of thin air, looking positively livid.

“Weasley! A word, if you please!”

“Now, Father,” Draco said as calmly as he could, because the hatred radiating in waves from a parchment-pale Lucius was far too real to ignore. “I'm sure whatever it is, it can wait. Mother shall not be pleased if she hears of any... harassment of our esteemed guests taking place on such a glorious day!”

“What guests?! He's nothing but a _servant_... and you'd do well to remember that!” Lucius seethed through gritted teeth and Draco could almost feel the burst of anger coming from the redhead behind his back.

“Your father is right, Draco,” Ron said coldly, deliberately calling him by his name to make the old man wince. “I'm here to _work_. So this, whatever it is, is going to have to wait. Oh, and one more thing...”

He suddenly found himself so deeply in Lucius's space that it made the old man instinctively take a step back in the presence of acute danger:

“I'm not your servant. I came, because he needs me and because your wife asked. She pays me, you don't. I wouldn't take your bloody money if it was the last fistful of galleons on this planet. You'd do well to remember _that_. And just so you know: for him - ” he pointed at the blond who was watching the exchange words with eyes wide open and a hitched breath, “... for him I'd work for free.”

He pushed past the stunned older man and made a sort of a corridor for Draco and his flabbergasted bride to pass through the crowd with his large frame. But just before he followed them, he hissed across the shoulder to the nearly petrified Malfoy Senior in a hard, cold voice that did nothing to hide how livid he was:

“If this is about the rings, talk to your wife, she gave them to me.”

And once Lucius regained the strength in his muscles and the presence of mind, he went and did just that.

~

It took him a while to locate her in the crowd and he had to wait for what felt like an eternity for a proper opportunity to grab her under the arm as gracefully as he could in his present state of cold rage and he practically kidnapped her away from the next person that wanted her attention:

“I'm so sorry, I shall return my wife to you promptly, we just have a rather important... detail to discuss and it really can't wait.”

There was barely a place that was not over-crowded with people at the peak of reception and Lucius's patience was running dangerously thin, so he didn't bother roaming around the property, looking for a place to hold a private conversation, he made one instead. With a discrete flick of his wand the guests in a corner by the window suddenly felt an over-whelming desire to take their conversation elsewhere and with lips pressed together tightly to keep the avalanche of his anger inside, Lucius barely managed a decent privacy charm before his frustration and wrath erupted:

“What on earth have you done, woman?! I’ve never been so humiliated in my life! You made me look like a complete and utter fool in front of everyone, like some… geriatric who can’t remember where he’d put the rings for his son’s wedding! This is unforgivable, Narcissa! And what for?! _What-the bloody hell-for?!_

I thought at first that the boy had stolen the rings, I certainly wouldn’t have put that behind someone named Weasley, always out to ruin things for me and make me look like a fool! I was certain that was his imbecile way to make himself seem more important, but I’ve just come from speaking to him – honestly, what a brute! – and he disclosed that it was you who gave him the rings! And that certainly calls for an explanation! I won’t be tossed around like a fool, Narcissa, not under my own roof!”

But his wife merely smiled one of her dismissive, cold smiles that could freeze the summer sun in the skies and tilted her head majestically:

“Calm yourself down, darling. It would be a first-class scandal if you were to give yourself a cardiac arrest in the middle of your son’s wedding, I’m not sure if the etiquette requires that we should proceed in such an extreme case and I’m certain the wedding would be quite ruined. Now… as for the explanation. Let me begin by assuring you that young Ronald there had absolutely nothing to do with… let’s call it a misplacement of the rings. That was all me. Unfortunately, I deemed it quite necessary.

However, if it will make you feel any better, please know that the whole incident wasn’t designed with a desire to make you feel foolish, but out of entirely… different reasons.”

Her ice-blue eyes suddenly got a hard edge and in spite of the unwavering politeness of her words, there was a quiet cold threat underneath them that didn’t leave him untouched:

“To make the long story short – I felt there was a need for… enhanced protection. You see, once it was agreed that Ronald Weasley should become Draco’s… companion I realized there was no way in Heaven and Earth that you’d be able to stand it for long. Draco simply glows with happiness around Ronald and sooner or later, you would have figured that out and before long you would have had enough. You hate Ronald, you hate his whole family, irrationally and from the heart, and if Draco was to have any chance to keep the love of his life near…”

“Don’t call him that!” Lucius hissed, suddenly as pale as a parchment. “My son does not… have interest in that boy! He’s a man, for Salazaar’s sake… and a Weasley!”

“Oh, so you would have me lie?” Narcissa looked at him with a raised eyebrow and then went on to shrug dismissively: “No matter, it is not on me to discuss your son’s heart, should you like to know more about it, I suggest you ask him. Now - to finish the explanation you had asked for and then so rudely interrupted: when I realized that it was only a matter of time before you hurt Ronald, as viciously and covertly as only you are capable of, darling, I decided that some extreme measures were indeed in place. So I made sure they were bonded.”

All life seemed to run out of Lucius at these words and he stared at his elegant, beautiful wife with his mouth unhinged, never before feeling more betrayed and disoriented.

“Bonded?” he repeated in the voice as dry and colourless as the parchment, as if he couldn't believe he had heard her right.

“Yes, darling. Bonded. You heard me correctly. It was quite necessary, sadly, but you have no one but yourself to blame, your hatred to everyone named Weasley was a risk I wasn't prepared to take. So I performed a ritual myself, placed the charm on the box containing the wedding rings and made sure Ronald held it the same time he touched Draco's fingers. I'm not sure if they are aware of it already, but they soon will be, the bond between them will grow stronger as the days go by. It's all very consensual, I assure you, you know very well bonding doesn't work unless two people are completely in tune with each other – and the fact that it seems to have worked beautifully just goes to show that they are indeed meant to be. I saw their magic blend into one, have I mentioned that I have the gift? No? Oh, well, now you know. Oh, Lucius, I wish you could see it, it was just... splendid!”

For a moment her eyes shone with honest awe as if she could not quite forget the scene of the ancient spell bonding two magical auras together, but when her eyes fell back on his drawn, pale face that just breathed disbelief and impotent anger, she sighed in resignation:

“Sorry, darling, for a moment there I forgot who I was talking to. Of course you wouldn't appreciate it. But it is, what it is now. You do know how the bonding works, don't you? You will not lay a finger on Ronald or your son would suffer the same ill fate. What misfortune befalls one, has the other one suffering as well and if one perishes, the other... well, you get the picture. It's all quite... _final_ , I'm afraid.”

“Why??” Lucius finally spit out in a croaky voice, as if he was trying to wake up from a nightmare and he didn't quite know how. “Why would you go and so something so... atrocious... so... _insane_? Have you lost your mind completely?! Have you been hexed?! Has he done anything to you, the Weasley boy?! Put you under Imperio of sorts?! I don't understand, I just... this could be the end of our family, have you any idea of the possible implications?! If this ever came out...”

“Oh, so you want to know why?” she interrupted and finally there was a reflection of his anger in her voice as well. “I've done it for the same reason that I rolled the dice that night in the forest and lied about Potter no longer breathing to the Dark Lord himself: I've done it for love, Lucius. Something that kept this family together through thick and thin, better and stronger than any magic could. Because my son deserves it. Because love is sacred, Lucius,” she revealed her one big secret quietly, strangely sadly, broke the privacy charm around them and left with her head held up high.

“Don't you - ” Lucius hissed behind her angrily, but cut his words abruptly when the tone of his voice nearly startled the passers-by out of their skin. But he was in too dark a mood to apologize, he just shot them such a murderous look they quickly made themselves scarce and once alone, he was more lost and enraged than ever.

This... it just wasn't possible. It couldn't be that his son and that... Merlin, he couldn't even say his name without wanting to shred him to pieces! It just _couldn't_ be, that was the only explanation, the only hope that still kept him together. Narcissa had gotten it wrong, she must have. She must have read some signals wrong, she must have misinterpreted. Surely, that was it. _His son_ would never... he would _never_ ... he was a Malfoy through and through... he would never... and _certainly_ not with a Weasley!

This misunderstanding needed to be cleared as fast as possible, it burned through all his other intents and purposes for the day, through all the feelings of joy and satisfaction that he was finally able to see his only son tying the knot – it was all ruined by this... dark smudge on Draco’s image, this _mistake_ in someone's judgement. He best talk to him as soon as possible, clear things up, obtain his assurances that this was nothing but the foulest mistake and hear him laugh at the absurd idea. If his demented wife, who clearly inherited every bit of madness that ran in her family, indeed had their only son bonded to that walking disaster of a Weasley, he would deal with this later. First, he needed to get that dark monster of insecurity of his chest, so he could breathe easier and think clearer.

~

He found Draco exactly where he was supposed to be: standing in front of a long line of people, with his pretty, blushing wife at his side, graciously receiving congratulations and gifts just the way he was supposed to and Lucius's heart warmed up at the sight of this respect for the proper etiquette; he knew very well how tedious his current occupation appeared to his son, yet he followed it perfectly, making it seem effortless, entertaining and an honour – exactly how it had meant to be. Yes, he was a true Malfoy and the very sight of him, standing there so proud and impeccable, gracefully accepting the presents and admiring them, smiling at the guests and his bride, and all in all so very _like_ him - this sight was enough to melt some of Lucius's insecurities away and improved his disposition.

The only fault to what would otherwise be a perfect scenery of a wedding bliss, was him, the Weasley menace, standing not three steps behind his son, carrying on what seemed to be a vivacious conversation with Narcissa, while his alert eyes never left the crowd. Every hair on Lucius's body stood up at the sight of him and when Ron noticed him, he gave him a look so cold and dismissive it made the silver-haired wizard feel unwelcome in his own house. That was it, the insolence, that bloody Weasley insolence and cheek! He would have no more of it! He would have a chat with his son, obtain his assurances and get rid of the freckled bastard as soon as possible. Right bloody now was too late!

True to his penchant for ruthless behaviour, though carefully coated in politeness, he cut through the crowd with many _“I apologize”, “Please, excuse me”, “Oh, was that your foot? I'm ever so sorry! But you see, this is rather urgent...”_ sown left and right and he placed a nervous, cold hand on his son's shoulder with a fatherly authority that left no room for objection:

“A word, son, if you please...”

Something in his father's drawn face made Draco's initial surprise morph into alert and uneasiness that was further enhanced when he saw his mother's suddenly flushed face and uncommonly fierce eyes: if she was royally cross and this was what he thought it was... Draco felt his stomach sink with a speed of an anchor thrown overboard. What on Salazaar's stinky earth was he supposed to do now? His mother had warned him about telling his father the truth, but somehow the old man must have sniffed it out on his own and now to lie in his face...

“My sincere apologies,” his mother interrupted his panicked thoughts, when she addressed the line of people – endless, just bloody endless! - that still needed their attention with a gracious smile. “I'm certain we will be able to pick up the lovely tradition of married couple's introduction promptly. Shall we say in half an hour or so? Surely that would give you time enough to resolve whatever urgent issue had arisen, Lucius. Come, Astoria, we could all use freshening up a tad... and be sure to follow me close on my heels and listen carefully, this might be our last chance to update you on how to handle the Malfoy men! Gentlemen, you two best be on your best behaviour!”

Against the polite chuckle of the crowd she took the blushing bride under her arm and just as she walked past Draco she leaned in to kiss his cheek gently and as she did so, she whispered so quietly her lips were barely moving:

“He knows. Stand your ground now.”

And Draco knew he had to. With a heart beating in his throat he followed his father and tried to tell himself that this was it, that this was something he should want, something he would eventually have to face, saying out loud that he loved Ron and that he was only going through this travesty of a marriage to have a chance to be with him... only he had no time to get ready and standing up to his father, the father he had always looked up to, was never going to be easy, but like this... He could only hope he had the strength for it. He had to have it. He had no choice. He had to. He glanced back to the spot where Ron was supposed to be standing to get some of the much needed incentive and strength, only to notice in surprise that Ron was following them, quietly as a shadow with a darkened, pale face in which the blue eyes shone like torches. And Lucius had just noticed him as well.

“Just where do you think you're going!? Don't you dare follow my son around like a dog you are!”

Strangely enough, Draco felt a jab right next to his heart as if the rude words meant for Ron somehow had the power to hurt him and when he caught the face of his lover with his peripheral vision, he knew that he had perhaps a second in which he could react and prevent a first-class scandal at the Malfoy wedding. He knew that face. He saw that face countless of times, it was Ron's “ _that's it, you're dead!_ ” face, and back then it had usually meant a bloody nose and a handful of bruises, but he feared that this time Ron's retaliation won't take a form of a brawl.

He hastily turned towards him and did the only thing he knew would keep Ron from going after his father: he put both of his hands on his arms to tell him that it was alright, that he only needed a few moments alone with his father and that he should ignore his provocation... but all words have left him when he felt the warm current ran through him at the touch almost as if a circle had been completed and he was suddenly strangely at peace. He looked up at him and saw his own surprise mirrored. Before, at the altar, it was just an electrifying touch, but now... He forgot what he wanted to say, he just held onto him, staring into the beloved blue pools of brilliance half stunned, thinking that he would die if he ever had to let go and how on Merlin’s good earth could he have gone without this love for so long...

All the anger had already disappeared from Ron’s face when he finally smiled; one of his unbelievable sunny smiles that had the power to stop Draco’s heart, and he said quietly:

“I’ll be right here, alright? I reckon I’ll know if he tries to hurt you.”

“Yeah... just...” For a moment it seemed as if Draco had forgotten how to form words altogether. “Just don’t go anywhere, I’ll... this won’t take long,” he finally managed and forced himself to turn towards his father, who watched the quiet exchange of words with increasing alarm and disbelief etched into his frowning face.

“I wouldn't hurt my own flesh and blood, what do you take me for, you imbecile!” Lucius spat angrily across his shoulder at the redhead before he turned around and stormed away.

“Oh, I know you don't _think_ you would... and you won't. I'll make sure of that,” Ron said surprisingly calmly and his eyes, vibrant with light, were the only thing on him that spoke of the quiet storm going on underneath.

Lucius had made sure twice that Draco was indeed following him – and the redheaded nuisance wasn’t! - and as if he wasn’t entirely certain he wasn’t going to lose him after all, he didn’t dare take them very far. Servants’ quarters at the end of the corridor were going to do just fine and a moment after he entered half an dozen house-elves sprinted out squealing as if they had just seen the devil reincarnate. They didn’t have to be told not to return, the look on their Master’s face was enough to keep them out for the remainder of the day.

Once the door shut behind them, Ron followed them quietly, leaned on the wall by the door for support and exhaled a shaky breath: What the bloody hell was that... that incredible feeling?!

~

Draco was never so dead-calm as he was in the few moments before the door clicked and he was left alone with his father. He didn't have any words ready, no defiant, rebellious statements, no lies. He simply waited with his mind completely blank and didn't have a clue what was going to fly out of his mouth once his father started asking questions. So he stood still as a statue, ready to take whatever was coming, because, really – did it matter? What mattered was not in this room. What mattered was the man on the other side of this door, his embrace, his intoxicating fragrance, that incredible peace and quiet joy he felt when they were together. Whatever he had to endure to have that again, he was willing to take.

His father had turned towards him and a mixture of discomfort, if not embarrassment, cold determination and anger would have given him a queasy feeling in the stomach any other time but now. Now he just didn't care anymore.  

“You must be wondering why I brought you here,” Lucius started calmly enough as if he was trying his best to keep the atmosphere amiable. “I imagine it must be odd, to say the least, to be torn away from the side of your beautiful bride in the middle of your own wedding to have a discussion with your father, however, I assure you I wouldn't have done it have I not had the best of reasons.”

He looked at Draco pointedly, but his son merely lifted one of his eyebrows as if in wonder, in that moment such a spitting image of his mother, that it made Lucius most jittery and it certainly disrupted the fragile balance he had been trying so hard to keep.

“Namely,” he started, not quite certain how to approach the matter tactfully, “it has come to my attention... actually, your mother insinuated and the boy said... oh, darn... Well, your mother seems to have formed an absolutely _ridiculous_ opinion that you are holding a certain type of... _affection_ for the Weasley boy and that redheaded idiot seems to delude himself that your hatred towards him has somewhat... _subsided_ over the years. What I would really like to know is, if... that is to say...”

“Father,” Draco interrupted him calmly. “Are you asking me if I'm in love with Ron Weasley?”

Lucius's relief could hardly have been bigger:

“Precisely. Yes. At least that's what your mother seems to have wrapped her stubborn Black head around. Absurd thought, of course, as it is abhorrent, and for obvious reasons it got me quite worried. I confess myself falling for it... for a moment or so... until I let my better judgement resurface. I knew you would not do that to me, to this family and if you are prepared to dismiss this laughable notion...”

“Father,” Draco once more cut his words short and looked straight into his eyes. As grey crashed against grey there was something in his son's eyes that made Lucius speechless. And for a good reason.

“I've been in love with Ron Weasley since I was 14,” Draco said languidly, quietly, as if it was some sort of a universal truth everyone somehow managed to miss. “I didn't know what it was at first, you had pumped me so full of hatred for everyone named Weasley, I had mistaken my emotion for the longest time for something alike the loathing you felt for them. I knew it was an obsession, an endless, dangerous obsession that made me want to spend all my time around him and have those blue eyes light up for me, if only in hatred. But once he had kissed me...”

“I knew it!” hissed Lucius, who moments ago looked about ready to pass out and now clang to this new revelation as he would to a life-saving belt. “I knew that monster forced himself upon you, put you under Merlin-knows-what spell and now you think...”

“I wanted him to kiss me,” Draco said simply, without even waiting for his father's wrath to play out. “I practically begged him; not with words, no, but with every single action designed to gain his attention, every single vile prank I played on him, every cruel taunt I threw at him... I begged silently, father, because you haven't taught me words to ask for love; and when he made my dreams come true – the dreams I didn't even know I had - and kissed me... I practically melted into him the moment his lips touched mine, he never met a moment of resistance. I was his from that moment on, to this one. There was never anyone else. There won't be.”

As Lucius just gawped at him, his eyes nearly bulging and his face devoid of any colour, Draco smiled, a tiny sad smile barely making an appearance in the corner of his mouth as he spoke with calm determination yet again:

“He changed my life with that single miracle - and his own. Neither of us ever thought that a simple action like that – a defiant, reckless press of his mouth onto mine, designed to shut up my malice - would ever have such an impact on our lives – or we would have probably ran like hell in panic, both of us.”

And suddenly his eyes were all silver and dreamy again:

“It was enough you know - that warm mouth met mine just that once – and I was done in. The damage in that ice-cold armour of manners and disdain you had me wear was irreparable, it would forever have a hole in the shape of his heart. How he had done it, I don't know, and he doesn't have a clue either. But years after, when our paths crossed again, it was still there, that hole, calling out to him, begging to be filled, to make me feel complete like no one else ever could – and he answered. A million ties he had and a life so vastly different than mine – and still he answered. I don't know how his heart ever came to hear mine over all the buzz of our lives, but somehow, miraculously, it did. Once reunited, we were drawn together with force that was larger than life, I can’t even...”

His hand flew into his hair as if his nervous finger were hoping to find some sense among the blond strands, but he gave up the search and simply looked his father straight into his stricken grey eyes:

“I can’t explain it but it was almost as if we were meant to be. Now the feeling is more present than ever... I never asked to love him... but now I can’t imagine loving anyone else. It feels as if there is just half a man standing before you here, Father, and the other half is in front of this door... I can feel his anxiety, his confusion, his... everything, the love he holds for me... _everything_. I don't know how, but...”

“Oh, I know perfectly well _how_!” hissed Lucius, as pale as a stone grave. “Because your foolish mother had you bonded, that's how! I swear to god that woman is more insane than her mad mother ever was – and that one ended her life locked up!”

“I see...” Draco breathed out softly and finally everything made sense. He closed his eyes, said a thousand “thank you”s to Heaven for blessing him with the mother who cared so much, and then said simply:

“Remind me to thank her, Father. She could not have given me a wedding gift more desired, nor more precious.”

“Enough with this nonsense!” Lucius finally exploded and hurled himself at his son, grabbing him by the elegant robes. “You will let the Weasley menace go this minute! I will not suffer another moment of this travesty nor will I tolerate the ginger scum under my roof! You're a married man now and...”

“Oh, but I only married to protect him,” offered Draco calmly and didn't even flinch at his father's close proximity and fierce eyes. “Mother thought it was necessary, you see. She hoped once I married and began expanding my family, you were more likely to let me have my way – and by bonding she made sure that Ron would not be harmed. She always was a genius in strategy, I should really have Ron play wizard’s chess with her once...” his eyes sparkled at the intriguing thought, before he continued almost matter-of-factly:

“Now, I kindly suggest you move away from me, Father, because I fear I just might let myself grow angry or – Merlin forbid! - frightened. I'm afraid you would then discover what it really means having Ron Weasley under your roof and bonded to your son - should he as much as _smell_ me being threatened he would have you fly through the air like a puppet made of hay in no time! You can trust me on that one; I've seen him in action, I've got a taste of it even, during the school exercise and I'm telling you, you've got nothing on him - he's brutal, murderously fierce and his aim is dead-on! He used to be a Keeper, his defensive reflexes are to die for! You didn't really think I'd choose anything but the best, did you? Please... I'm a Malfoy after all, hardly anyone comes close to my man.”

“Don't call him that!” Lucius, who had since backed off some and tried to get a hold on himself, hissed with all his impotent malice at his beautiful, raving mad son. “How dare you! A Weasley! Have you gone insane!? You’re married now and...”

“Oh, but my wife knows,” Draco stated calmly. “She figured it out the second she saw me look past her when I spoke that last part of my marriage vows. Astoria might be a little more than a child, but she’s bright and a good observer. And damn brave. She confronted me with it, asked me straight out if I loved her and I didn’t think it would do our marriage any good if I lied, so I told her the truth. I tried to be a gentleman afterwards and I offered her back her freedom...”

“You didn’t!” Lucius nearly choked on his anxiety and now there was a complete different sort of alarm painted across his face.

“Oh, but I did. Only... she didn’t take me up on my offer. She says she loves me and that she would be my wife and – what’s important to you – carry my child. She is a truly remarkable woman.”

“Oh, Merlin be praised...” Lucius’s relief was so obvious it was almost comical. “I knew she was a sensible girl, thanks goodness someone managed to keep their wits about on this disastrous day!... My son... and a Weasley!”

The very thought seemed to have propelled him into a fresh fit of rage:

“ I will never tolerate this, never! Not under my roof, you hear me, boy?! Never!”

“Oh, no, certainly not here...” said Draco in a soft, nearly creamy voice. “I won’t have you put him down daily and come up with fresh taunting and humiliation every time you set your eyes on him. Astoria and I have no intention of living under your roof now that we’re married – you’re welcome to all the vast loneliness of the Manor, Father. I believe that Grandmother Black had made provisions for me in her will and the Bellevue Estate is to be transferred to me on the day of my wedding. It is lovely there, by the sea. And wherever I go, he goes with me.”

“You can’t... you won’t... I won’t have it...!!!” Lucius was almost spitting now and his grey eyes turned that nasty anthracite colour that always announced the worst was to be expected of him.

“Oh, yes I can. Actually, I already did,” the younger blond shrugged and added almost as an after-thought: “And just for the record: I don't really care for your approval. I'm only prepared to oblige you in a way to keep it private... for now. Because it suits me, it suits us. But I can't make any promises for the future.”

Lucius's cane crashed against the ground so unexpectedly that it made the blond flinch and the hatred breathing from his face was so tangible it made every muscle in Draco's body tense. They were so busy staring at each other that none of them noticed Ron who slipped quietly through the door, wand ready and a grim expression on his face.

“You don't want to make me mad, son!” the elder wizard seethed through the gritted teeth viciously and finally something snapped in Draco as he straightened himself up. 

“Indeed, father, I really don't. Because _this_ is not about you! This wedding is about you, it's _for_ you, all of it, I never wanted any part of it – but I still did it because you've drilled into me the importance of a family! Is it too much to ask _you_ for the same allegiance you so eagerly demand of me?! What Ron and I have is between us, it's none of your concern, do you hear me?! I knew I could never hope for any respect regarding my choices, let alone your approval or acceptance – but by Salazaar's beard, I _will_ ask for your tolerance!”

The last of his words were bellowed and Lucius stared with unhinged mouth at this... stranger with hurt and fire in his eyes and a voice he had never really heard shouting before. Who was this man, who suddenly replaced his quiet, pliant son? But the stranger disappeared as quickly as he had appeared. Draco was still enraged, but now his rage had a cold, familiar frosting and only by a bitter press of his mouth one could guess how much anger, pain and frustration was hiding under the marble surface.

“And don't you dare threaten me, ever again! You as much as flick that wand against me or my Ron and I swear by everything that is sacred to me that you'll never set eyes on your grandson!” he spoke with cold, haughty voice, as Malfoyian as it got and aimed to wound, and turned around on his heel swiftly as if he could no longer stand to look at his the man who gave him life, but would never let him live it the way he saw fit.

It was then that he noticed Ron, leaning on the wall by the door, his eyes on him, full of quiet sympathy he would never dare to speak out loud, and he walked straight to him and slipped into his embrace as if there was no other place where he could survive so very dishevelled and so raw. When the big arms slipped around his waist and brought him closer, he leaned into the crook of his neck and whispered quietly, with urgency and heartbreak in his voice:

“Please... take me away from here... if only for a moment... I can no longer stand it...”

And Ron said nothing. He quietly pressed a kiss into his hair in the full view of a shell-shocked Lucius Malfoy, and disapparated them without another word.

 

 

 


	51. Take me to Church 3/4 - Leave me breathless

“ _No Masters or Kings_  
_When the Ritual begins_  
_There is no sweeter innocence than our gentle sin_  
  
_In the madness and soil of that sad earthly scene_  
_Only then I am Human_  
_Only then I am Clean_  
_Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen._ ”

Hozier, Take me to church

 

“Where do you think they could be?” Astoria asked her new mother-in-law nervously. “It has got to be longer than half an hour!”

She didn't like the expression on Lucius's face when he came to fetch Draco, didn't like it one bit. Under his polite words there was a rough edge, the type that leaves shredded wounds behind, and there was that nearly desperate flicker in her husband's eyes before they closed down and turned to stone, that told her that he'd rather be anywhere in the world than in his father's company. But there was nothing to be done: she had to let him go and she could not argue with her mother-in-law on her wedding day in front of the guests; so when Narcissa pulled her behind as adamantly as only she knew how, Astoria could do nothing but bend her head in compliance and follow – she would have made a fool out of herself acting any differently.

Strangely enough, she was a bit more at peace when she threw one last look over her shoulder and saw Ron Weasley follow the father and son quietly. At least Draco won't be harmed physically, though the harsh words could cut wounds deeper than a sword, she knew that all too well. But her husband would be safe. She didn't know how she came to develop such trust in the fascinating redhead in a space of mere hours – perhaps it was down to the fact that he survived in the very centre of war against all odds, perhaps it was just his imposing appearance – but she knew she trusted him implicitly with Draco's life and her own. Everything about him said he was there to protect and even though she knew he was the mysterious person Draco fell for and could never marry, knew it without a shred of doubt – she did not feel threatened by him, not in the very least.

But Draco's father scared her, irrationally and overwhelmingly so. The one emotion he ever inspired in her was fear and she could not understand how the gorgeous Lady Malfoy by her side could ever share her bed and her life with such a cold, terrifying man. Draco's mother, on the other side, fascinated her. She was the very epitome of all things every young pure-blood lady aspired to be – classy and elegant, eloquent and capable, and on top of that as beautiful as a white rose covered in frost - and she was sort of awe-struck when Narcissa kindly addressed her just after they joined her with Draco to receive the guests:

“Do call me Mother, child, yes? I assume you call your mother Maman, as is the habit among the pure-bloods – strange fashion indeed, don't you think? - therefore Mother will do just fine. I've always wanted a girl to keep me company, but as soon as I married a Malfoy, I knew it was not going to be.”

But at this moment Astoria only wanted her husband by her side. Who comes and practically kidnaps a groom in the middle of his own wedding, for Merlin's sake!? Just how ruthless – and rude, she thought quietly - was her father-in-law?! Therefore she couldn't really focus on all the polite chatter of Lady Malfoy, - oh, blimey, Mother, she really needed to remember that – and her eyes kept on strolling about the place restlessly to find him. Every sight of blond hair set her jittery nerves on edge and finally also Narcissa noticed her scattered attention.

“Whatever is the matter with you, child?” she asked her with one of her elegant eyebrows arched, but upon seeing a flush of blood tinge her cheeks, she added in a kinder voice: “Is this about my husband and my son? I’m quite certain they will be with us shortly. Whatever it is, it cannot be keeping them away for much longer.”

“Where do you think they could be?” Astoria finally gave in and blurted out her concern. “It has got to be longer than half an hour!”

“Twenty-seven minutes precisely,” Narcissa stated grandly and added almost as an after-thought: “If Lucius is but a second late, he will feel it... oh, let's say, rather unpleasantly, I made sure of that.”

She smiled beatifically at astonished Astoria's face and the girl barely remembered her manners enough to close her unhinged mouth abruptly, returning the lovely lady’s smile a bit stiffly, making a silent vow to never, _ever_ make Draco's mother angry, the woman was scary in her own right.

“But what about...”

“I'm afraid I'm quite incapable of hexing my own son, dear,” Narcissa smiled condescendingly. “I hope he would find his way back to us eventually after my husband is... otherwise occupied. Ah, there he comes...”

Astoria turned around vigorously and with a big, lustrous smile, only to have her heart drop down to her knees - “ _he_ ” was Lucius, not Draco, and he looked as if he had just come from going three rounds with Dementors. In fact, he looked so miserable and distraught that there was a flash of something alike pity mixed with worry across Narcissa's face before she looked at Astoria kindly:

“Do excuse me, darling, it seems as if a small... intervention is in order, my husband appears to be in a right state.”

Without actually waiting for Astoria's “ _O_ _f course, by all means..._ ” she hurried to intercept Lucius who seemed to have finally noticed her and headed towards her as if she was a lighthouse in the stormy sea.

“He just left! With him...!” she managed to catch his croaked, despaired voice before the Lady Malfoy hushed him and disapparated them so quickly that no one seemed to have noticed what could have been a right juicy scandal in the making.

Right, Astoria thought, so now what? She could hardly be expected to greet the guest and accept their congratulations all by herself, could she, and her husband was nowhere to be seen, so... She looked around and she decided there was really only one thing left for her to do: she was going to go and look for Draco. It wasn't like she had anything better to do... and now they were bound to each other for life, so it was actually her marital duty to make sure he was fine. It wasn't curiosity, plain and simple, of course not... well, perhaps just a little bit. If he was indeed with him.... She didn't want to think about the fact that she was developing a rather alarming obsession with her husband and another man, because... well, it wasn't _that_ , was it? Nope, not that at all, no curiosity, just concern. Like any good wife was expected to have. Now, where could they have gone?

~

Draco pounced on him the very second they materialized. He never needed someone so badly in his life and he didn’t care if Ron was going to land them in the middle of the reception hall – he would have still pressed him against the nearest wall and sought out his mouth - the pull between them was terrifying to the point that he simply didn't care anymore. And nothing else mattered when the soft lips opened up for him, all fresh, and warm and welcoming, as if Ron Weasley had been waiting patiently the whole morning to be kissed. It didn’t matter he was hardly ever the aggressive one in their relationship – Ron could take it; he could, when his blond lover needed him to, and Draco knew he would. It was no longer important that he had yet again let his father down and that he could never expect him to understand – he could live with anything the old man had to throw at him as long as he could have this... this unforgettable, magical man by his side who took over his life and his heart like a warm summer storm.

His long fingers already crawled into the silken blond hair to make a beautiful mess out of him, to keep him close, keep him still, so Ron Weasley could kiss the very soul out of his beloved blondie, and those fingers were wonderfully strong and warm, as if they had the power to say: _“Don’t worry, I’m here… I’ll always be here for you.”_

As their kissing got more desperate, more needy, as if they urgently had to assert right here and now that they still belonged to each other, now more than ever, Draco pressed into him with his entire body, against that wonderful, hot hardness that was always there for him, and when he heard him moan wantonly into his mouth, he knew he needed more. He would not stop here, he couldn’t. So what if this was his wedding day, so what if there was a million people waiting, and his bride among them, so what, _so fucking what_?! He got the only thing he craved, what he wanted and needed like the air itself in this tiny spot of Heaven in Ron’s arms and fuck them all to hell and back if he was going to let go!

And his loving redhead must have guessed his unspoken desire as he did so many times and with no warning he span him around forcefully, knocking him against the wall and dissolving him into an utter wreck, because he loved nothing better than this numb display of raw power and masterful brutality.

“More...” the blond asked hungrily between two starved kisses as his fingers dug ruthlessly under the elegant, dreadfully expensive robes his mother had picked for the redhead with much care, and didn't care what they destroyed in their path. He needed to feel the warm skin underneath; needed to press his mouth into that hot body he'd been day dreaming of the whole morning and devour that desperate want he could feel through layers upon layers of fabric still keeping them apart. He had to hear him growl quietly and whisper that same urgent urgency for _more_ into his skin... gods, how he loved this... he had to have more, had to feel that strong white teeth nibbling on his earlobe and making him shiver with hot moist air and the sweet-dirty whisper of those frustrated brain-melting obscenities that made him so hard he could barely stand it.

And once Ron's teeth sunk into his neck, incredibly gently, lovingly, as if he was trying to hurt him with care and only because he knew how much he loved it, he could barely stand at all. His moan was something between a helpless whimper and a groan, greedy for more sweet torture - and a moment later he lost it completely: the soft, wet mouth had began its travel up his neck, gently licking and soothing the wounded skin on its way with long, needy strokes of that heavenly tongue, and they undid the last of him with their sweet breath hovering playfully right above his ear:

“Would you like me to... fuck you slowly... and senseless... my gorgeous blond god? Tear those priceless robes off and lick you from head to toe... until you're burning? Go on my knees in front of you and bury my face into that bursting lap of yours... hiding treasure... my favourite treasure... rub all that hardness... and wetness against my cheek... and another... until you beg me for it... I like hearing you beg... I like it the way you say my name... loud... like you can't help it... like you don't care about anything else... it's just me... and you... and that needy, hot cock of yours begging for me... more of me...”

Those strong calloused fingers sunk into his mouth and the blond sucked them in eagerly, licking each and every digit with devotion until Ron grunted in a strained voice “ _enough, goddamn you..._ ” and they disappeared from his mouth... only to come looking for him inside of his robes a moment later. And they were as wonderfully brutal as he needed them to be, mindlessly tearing the offensive fabric in its way, claiming him with bruising possessiveness, freeing the strained flesh from its confines until the blond howled in earnest when his leaking cock took a first desperate plunge inside the giant, tight fist he had made slick with his own tongue.

“Oh, baby... fucking fantastic... I love wanking you, precious... no one fits so perfectly inside my fist, no one thrusts as eagerly as you... you fit with me, my love... you fit inside my fist, fit around me so perfectly when we fuck.... and I just _love_ making your cock fit into my mouth and have you fill me... you'd like that, wouldn't you, gorgeous... get your dirty, hungry Weasel on his knees in front of you and fuck his mouth... hard...”

The ungodly guttural sound that came out of Draco's mouth at the mental image, made Ron curse softly “ _shit, babe... not yet... not just yet_ ” when the long aristocratic fingers dug into his robes frantically in a desperate need to feel the swollen, hot flesh underneath them.

“I'm going to fucking ruin you if you let me have you now,” the redhead told him through clenched teeth, barely keeping his panting and his frustration at bay. “I missed you like hell these past few days and I couldn't take my fucking eyes off your arse when I walked behind you down the aisle... I was hard before you ever turned around and when you did and gave me that smile... fuck, man... I have it bad, so fucking bad for you, Malfoy... and when I'm going to have you, it's not going to be just a quick wank... or some hasty fucking against the wall.... oh, no... I'm going to have you good and proper, shred your fucking fancy clothes, undress every last bit of you and just fucking _assault_ you... until you give into me and let me have you any way I please...”

And just the hot, moist breath of those words, combined with the masterful, eager hand pumping his needy cock with a skill and a vengeance of a frustrated, abandoned lover, nearly had Draco spilling his painful load.

“Ron...” he whimpered in need because he was seconds from coming and he needed to, craved to have those fantasies come true. “Please...”

“Just a few more hours,” Ron told him quietly, passionately, and his fingers, wet with precome he had been smearing all over his aching cock, slipped up the crumpled, priceless shirt he had ravaged and began teasing his nipples mercilessly through the thin fabric. “God, you have no idea what you do to me... how crazy you make me, how hard and bothered... I wanted to fuck you right there and then, in a hall full of people, I'd have a hundred fucking people watching your surrender, hearing you unravel around my name...”

“Fuckfuckfuck, Ron… please… don’t…. now…” Draco seemed to have lost all his ability to form sentences. His world narrowed down to a calloused, tight fist pumping him with abandon, to his nubs getting a harsh treatment he was addicted to and there was nothing outside this private spot of just-out-of-reach-bliss that mattered. Ron knew he got him, he felt the impossible, wonderful pressure building just under his skin and he was determined to have it released at his own terms.

“A few more hours, precious, and I'll be all yours again… kneeling before you... caught between your legs, ready to worship you with the last breath I have... You love this, don't you? You love how helpless and needy you make me... God, once I'm with you, we're going to fuck all the time… You know how much I love the taste of your skin, I'll eat you out for breakfast every day... cause nothing, absolutely nothing in this whole fucking world tastes better than your cock, pumped full of come, rammed into my mouth...

I love taking it in... so, so smooth against the inside of my lips when I spoil it with that first slow lick.... and suck on the tip teasingly... so heavy against my tongue when I give into your begging and let it slip inside... so... incredibly filling when I wrap my mouth around it and take you from the root to the tip... and you finally get to fuck my mouth... you like fucking my mouth, don't you?... you insatiable little slut of mine... you slip inside like a silver snake you are and just fuck it... ride it like it's yours to ride... like it's only there to please you... the hot wet cave sucking you in, surrounding you from all sides… making you helpless and brutal all in one.... making you rock those slim hips of yours wantonly, in that insane pace only you can keep up... making you ram that gorgeous arse into me until that leaking spongy head of yours hits the back of my throat every bloody time and you're finally shaking and coming and coming...”

“Ron... oh, bloody hell, Ron...” was the only thing Draco managed in a choked voice before his hips bucked one last time and he was flooding the large warm fist in a hopeless surrender with a load of juices that just wouldn't stop spilling.

He buried his face into his shoulder, breathless and shaking, and desperately held on to the moments of pure bliss and unbearable completion spreading through his body like a warm tide, making him boneless and completely undone.

“I love you…” he whispered quietly into the man that held him close and together, and he had meant it like never before. “I love you, Ron. I can’t lose you. Ever.”

And Ron had to swallow the bitter taste in his mouth when he remembered Harry and the promise he had wrought out of him, but this was not a moment to ruin, this was Draco’s day, Draco’s and his own, and he would keep his heavy secret for a while longer. So he just kissed the blond head instead and told him quietly:

“I love you, too. It seems like need you more every day. Just before… after you fought with your father and you came to me… I just had to touch you, I had to feel you, I had to comfort you – I _had_ to, I can’t even describe it, it’s all just so… crazy and intense. It’s like my feelings for you just bloomed into colour and life and it’s almost scary…”

“My mother had us bonded,” Draco interrupted him without ever lifting his head up and felt his body instantly go rigid underneath him – only to relax a moment later and Ron Weasley exhaled slowly as if he needed the time between two breaths to find the right words.

“Oh… I see… that makes perfect sense, then…”

And then he added with a small, dry chuckle almost as an afterthought:

“Mother of god, Malfoy… your mother is a piece of work, you know. If your father wasn’t such a bastard, I’d almost be sorry for him.”

And all of the sudden Draco’s heart went into an over-drive. What if Ron didn’t want it? What if his mother had misjudged him and the redhead would feel trapped and wanted out… there was no way out!

“There is no way out!” he blurted miserably, unable to keep the disconcerting thought to himself.

“I know,” Ron said curtly, but in spite of his calm voice the blond was suddenly dead-frightened of looking at him. What if those blue eyes had turned to ice and Ron felt manipulated and miserable at the thought of being tied to him for life. Oh, blast! His mother should have asked, she really should have asked and…

“She only did it to protect you -” he tried, but cut his words abruptly, because no amount of explanation and apology was ever going to fix this, if Ron didn't want it.

Unexpectedly, the redhead's warm laughter flooded the room and Draco’s head shot up in a surge of hope.

Ron Weasley had a soft smile on his lips and a mischievous look in his eyes and too late the blond remembered that this was the brother of Fred and George Weasley, the pranksters extraordinaire:

“You…!!! Oh, you bastard!” he barely managed, but his relief was too great to leave any room for genuine anger. And it didn’t help one bit, that Ron was still laughing; a gorgeous, heart-filling sound of pure joy and innocent mischief, and it was the most beautiful sound on the planet and no one, absolutely fucking no one looked as breath-taking as Ron Weasley did with his blue eyes lit-up like stars and the pretty soft mouth stretched into a genuine smile. Draco’s heart ached at the sight of him and he felt desire once again coiling like a radiant, golden snake in his loins.

“I just don’t want to lose you…” he murmured, trying to sound dejected and shoving his face back into Ron’s shoulder to hide his embarrassing, immense relief and the beginning of his arousal. And then Ron’s fingers were in his hair, treading gently, just the way he loved it, and Ron kissed the blond head once again as if asking for apology:

“C’mon babe, you know, I couldn’t resist it…” he whispered soothingly. “It’s the Weasley genes and that look of panic on your face was just… priceless…”

He chuckled once more when Draco’s narrow fist hit against his chest in a futile sign of disagreement with such impossible trickery, but he caught it and kissed it gently, had his knuckles melt against the sort, wet mouth until the blond let out a small, strained whimper and the redhead knew he was forgiven.

“You can’t be sad, love, not on this day,” he spoke gently. “How could you think, even for a moment, that I wouldn’t want it, silly? For Merlin’s sake, it’s the best news I’ve heard all day, there’s nothing I would treasure more… I’m crazy about you, how many times do I have to say it? I’ve left it all behind for you, to be with you, haven’t I?” he unexpectedly pulled him into a heated kiss and Draco once again let himself melt into a whirl of aching need to own this man and passion to consume him.

“Merlin, man.. you can’t do this to me…” Ron murmured in a strained voice, but entirely unable to pull away. “We’re out of time… so fucking out of time… your wife is waiting… your mother… and a million people…”

“If you think… for one moment… that I’m going to let you walk out there… knowing how deliciously hard you are, knowing that you’re thinking of me… wanting me… ogling my arse… you ought to have your head examined, Weasley,” Draco panted into his mouth, the tone suddenly so full of Malfoyian attitude and possessiveness, that it made Ron moan quietly and hiss a wanton curse.

“Let me… please…”

Draco’s adept fingers found their way onto the swollen bulge under his lover’s robes and he only had to run his fingers over it a couple of times for Ron to start coming undone under the skilful hand.

“We shouldn’t…” the redhead whispered in the last desperate attempt at sanity, but it was all gone, when his silver-eyed Slytherin sunk on his knees in front of him and rubbed the pretty head against the painfully restrained flesh. “Shit… Draco… don’t…”

“Please,” the blond begged, fully aware how much it got the redhead’s juices flowing when he did. “Please, Ron… I’ll be quick, I swear… but I need to… need to know that you’re mine… need to inhale that addictive scent of yours… I need to taste it… suck on it… drink from it… please… I missed you so…”

In a true Slytherin fashion he didn’t bother to wait for his answer, he knew he’d won when he freed the bursting shaft and drove it straight down his throat in a way that it made Ron’s hips thrust forward violently.

“Oh, _bloodyfuckinghell_ , Malfoy…”

Those long, strong fingers delved into Draco's hair again as Ron finally let go of himself and began fucking the wonderful obliging cave at a heart-attack pace, because he was just that far gone, because he needed him and he just couldn't stand the mounting tension any longer. That beautiful mouth, that used to taunt him and hiss insults at him, was as all his to have and to abuse and he knew he would take every inch of ground the blond was willing to give; he just wanted to own him so badly. The hot wet flesh was wrapped so tightly around him he literally saw stars in front of his eyes and the sensation was beyond mind-boggling. Just the thought of having Draco fucking Malfoy on his knees in front of him, with that perfect pale mouth tinged red and full of his cock, was enough to send him spiralling towards the bliss that he denied to himself for too long, too fucking long...

God, how he wanted to fuck him, he was dying to, and he promised to find the time an opportunity to do it good and proper, but it was in the middle of the bloody day - _Draco's wedding day_ , for Merlin's sake! - and their time together was running out. But right now Ron couldn't give a flying fuck on a broom if Lucius Malfoy himself and the late Bellatrix came barging through the door... he couldn't stop, he couldn't, he was so hard it hurt and he's been that way the second they landed in this abandoned room he didn't even know what it was and didn't care to find out. His world was currently focused on his cock sunk into the most delicious mouth on the planet and little details like wedding, unknown room and stolen time no longer mattered. 

“You just never do anything... oh, gods... half-way, do you?” he panted, but his stuttering barely qualified as words, so he gave it up for a bad job, and thought about closing his eyes to focus on his release... only, watching Draco work his mouth around him was always his favourite sport, and god, it was incredible... just looking at the blond head moving between his legs with eagerness and devotion, clearly enjoying what he was doing, brought him so close, that he nearly felt himself brush against the edge he was going to topple over...oh... so good... so bloody good...

And it wasn't like Draco could answer. He was finally, at long fucking last, immersed into that wonderful male fragrance, that special Ron-scent that could make him unravel completely and he just couldn't get enough. It seemed impossible, but he was rapidly growing hard again - how the bloody hell that worked was beyond him! - and there was nothing he could do about that. Just sucking Ron off could do that to him, he loved the long fingers buried in his hair as if he was the redhead's property and before he could help it one of his hands found a way onto his own shaft to cradle its fullness lovingly, perhaps to come once more, right next to him.

“Oh, no you don't!” was the only thing he heard before he found himself all but flying through the air and he finally found himself knocked backward into a deliciously soft bed, looking upwards into his lover's stormy blue eyes. “No one's touching you today, not even yourself, is that clear?” his man hissed with temper that got Draco's blood boiling like nothing else could. “No one but me... it's all for me, Malfoy, every last inch of this precious flawless skin of yours and if I have to tie your hands to the bedposts to get my point across, I'll do it, I'll fucking do it, you hear me?!”

“I hear you...” Draco whispered obediently because the mental image of being tied to the bedposts and fucked stupid had just melted his brain into a goo and he needed a moment to get himself under wraps. He loved, loved, _loved_ his Ron all possessive and dominant, and if he had it his way, he'd have himself punished by him every bloody time. And at the same time he knew he was done sucking his cock, he wasn't leaving this bed until he got every bit of defiance fucked out of him. And he needed him angry enough to get away with it. He still knew how to wind him up.

“But what about my bride?” he asked innocently. “I have to...”

“You don't fucking have to do anything!” hissed Ron. “Not today, you don't. You're going to take you wife to bed after midnight, do your thing, do what you must... whatever, I don't care... just not today. Today is for me! Today _you_ are for me!”

The brain-melting kiss they shared got them both moaning and Draco imperceptibly aligned their bodies to serve his seductive purpose and before Ron knew what hit him, their cocks were on top of each other and the blond was rolling his hips into the man on top of him with minute movements that shot sparks up his spine.

“Draco!” the redhead gasped, because he knew that alluring expression in the half-lidded silver eyes, he knew that he'd been played and that there was no way out of this bed before he buried himself balls deep into the debauched-looking blond who knew how to beg for it so persuasively.

“You brought me to my bedroom... to my childhood bed,” Draco whispered into his ear looking as innocent as a virgin on her first night and at the same time sending shivers of lust down his spine with his hot, wet breath. “Are you going to fuck me on it?”

When only a loud, strained “ _oooh... for fuck's sake... please..._ ” was his only answer, he knew what to do:

“I'd like that... I'd like that very much... you have no idea how many times I wanked over you in this very bed... since I was barely more than a child... you were my first wet dream and it happened in this very bed... I spilled my first come into these sheets, thinking of you... I still remember like it was yesterday. I'd gone to bed agitated, wound up, thinking of all the vile, evil things I was going to do to you after the holiday and I must have fallen asleep and you took over my dreams completely... it was all so real...

We were lying in the grass by the Hogwarts lake and your fiery head was buried into my neck and you were so wonderfully hot as I knew you were going to be from all the brawls I provoked you in... and in my dreams I felt no hatred towards you, just this over-powering, all consuming lust that burned through my loins... And all you did was kiss me and whispered my name into my ear with that sweet breath of yours and I remember sinking my fingers into your hair as we started rolling our hips together... and I've never felt anything so breath-taking and incredible in my life and I wanted more, forever more, I couldn't get enough... And when I finally woke up my heart was in my throat, beating like a battle-drum, I was covered in sweat and come and boy, did I come... it was all over my pyjamas with little golden snitches printed on them, I was soaked, and god... I was frightened and aroused and excited and Merlin, even back then you drove me crazy...

I never brought anyone here, I couldn't, not afterwards... here, you're the first... my very first one, my only one... and I want you to take me... in this bed... because it had never known anyone but you and I want you to fuck me into this mattress, pound your name into me and make every dream I ever had on this bed come true... please, Ron... it will no longer be my bed after today, I belong elsewhere, but not yet, not today... it'll be our bed... you'll be my first on it... and my last... and... _ohgodyesss_!!!”

Sometime between the frantic kissing and awkward fumbling with the remaining clothes, Ron managed to push his knees up and his face disappeared between his legs to make a short business of getting his hole ready, because he knew, he just _knew_ he cannot hold back any longer, he was just so fucking hard, his cock seemed to weigh a bloody ton and the flood of his come was pressing against its fleshy prison to a point that it made him see stars in the sweet self-imposed torture. He was beyond words, beyond apologies, beyond explanations, he just had to have him, had to have him now, had to own him and brand him for his own and fuck him into a wreck, just... fuck him, fuck him, fuck him until his beautiful blond demon broke apart underneath him and screamed his name... nothing but his name...

He slipped into him in one fluid motion, oblivious to anything but to a feeling of that smooth, impossible tightness that wrought a hopeless “ _Oh, god, gorgeous... I can't last long..._ ” out of him.

“Then don't... don't last long... please, Ron... I need... I need... _godyespleasethat_... oh, you beautiful redheaded motherfucker, just like that... give it to me, cause I'm dying for it... I never get enough... you're the only one... please, Ron... so close... just... _ohmerlinfuckingchrist_ , Ron!!!”

“Fuckfuckfuck, ohhhh... oh, god, love... Draco... Draco... Draco... gods, man...”

Ron collapsed onto his ravaged blond prey who currently had a look of complete bliss spreading across the pretty face and he just couldn't think... couldn't breathe, couldn't stop his hips from rocking softly into his gorgeous blond god as if he was somehow trying to crawl into him, get even closer, hoping to become one with him. His composure was destroyed; his mind a blur and he'd be honestly hard pressed to remember his own name...  

This bonding thing... Merlin... if this thing keeps on getting more intense it's going to be the end of him soon! He knew he had some place to be but couldn't remember where and didn't really care, he just wanted to stay like this... for good... with his man panting underneath him all warm and cuddly and smiling blissfully, inside this wonderfully comfortable bed where the outside world could not reach them. He had a hard time finding a way out of his bliss and only when he felt long fingers strolling lovingly down his back he slowly swam back to the real world and opened his eyes just too meet the sweetest, warmest smile and the silver eyes lit up like stars. The blond captured his mouth in a silent “ _thank you_ ” and Ron nearly got lost in a sensual sensation of their lips touching again.

“I love you,” he mouthed quietly, because he needed him to know before their time ran out and they had to once again slip into uncomfortable roles of a loving groom and an honoured guest.

“Such a romantic...” Draco whispered gently, tracing his mouth with his finger. “I love that about you. It just swims into this pretty ginger head of yours and you blurt it out while I'm still trying to find the right words...”

“You have no idea...” Ron whispered and between one breath and the next, the big hand closed his eyes gently and the soft mouth voice whispered a quiet melody down his ear, making him shiver:

 “ _Leave me breathless..._

_Sight of million galaxies exploding..._

_Leave me breathless..._

_Taste of childlike dreams my heart is holding..._

_Leave me breathless,_

_Leave me breathless,_

_You leave me breathless.”_

 

The warm mouth kissed his closed eyes gently, then the soft lips descended onto his and never left and... Draco couldn't stop kissing him, he just... couldn't, he couldn't let go. That soft, sweet mouth, that incredible man were all he wanted in life and his heart ached at the very thought of letting him go.

“What is this song?” he whispered, only to prolong their tender encounter, their priceless bond, sparkling with love, pulling on his very heart-strings.

“It's Muggle,” Ron murmured, sounding just adorably embarrassed. “Something I - ... never mind, forget it. It's nothing.”

“It's lovely...” the blond told him, his voice barely working because he was all raw in his arms and lost in his eyes. “It's you... it's how you make me feel... every precious moment we spend together... and it's so _you_ to sing me a Muggle song on a whim... I didn't even know you could sing and you can, beautifully so, and this was just... you know how happy you make me, don't you?” he touched his face just to be sure.

“I better,” Ron whispered back, catching one of the fingers that came to too close to his mouth with his lips, and sucked on it gently, making the Slytherin's eyes close in an instant surrender. “Now that we're bonded, we're sharing so more than just a bed, love. If you're sad, I will know and I will feel it and won't be able to get away from it. You run deep inside my bones now, Draco Malfoy. All I ever wanted.”

And when the elegant fingers rapidly dug into the silken red hair once again, they allowed themselves to share one last moment of their priceless, tender unity, before Ron whispered.

“It is time, love... Someone will come looking for us and it'll all be ruined. We need to do this right, we can't afford to blow it; it's also our future at stake, yeah?”

“I know...” the blond sighed in resignation. “But I don't want to leave. I'm tired. Besides, I can't go out there looking like this, you ruined my robes...” he complained like a petulant child and unexpectedly earned himself a smack on the arse-cheek that made him jump and gasp in excitement. When it was followed by a mumbled, resentful “ _Pot calling kettle black, the only decent set of clothes I've ever owned and he turns them into a pile of rags!_ ”, it made the blond smile blissfully and had him stretch out his arm:

“Go on, help me up, then. Just for your information, you do that at your own peril, because you had all but destroyed me – not much new there, I'm afraid - and I might require your help getting dressed as my robes have been wrecked by an unknown brute – honestly, I wasn't conscious enough to pay attention to that particular crime as I was too busy being ravaged to bits by this lovely arse you seem to be in possession of.”

And that made Ron throw his head back and laugh to the high-heaven with his deep rumbling laughter and in the end it was why Draco had done it, because he loved watching him laugh, because he knew it was him who made the redhead like this – happy and, for the moment, care-free.

“Oh, I'll help you put your clothes on, Malfoy, no worries, even if I have to Spello-tape it on you, we, the Weasleys pride ourselves on our house-keeping charms. Though I might have some personal interest invested in not doing so good a job at your arse, so perhaps I could enjoy a good view of it, if the unfortunate fabric gives way later in the day...”

“Weasley!” Draco gasped in mock-indignation, but electricity ran down his spine at the very thought that Ron would be there, ogling his behind with _some kind_ of expectation, and when he was pulled closer and _accidentally_ landed in his arms, he used the welcome opportunity and wrapped his arms around his neck: “Mr. Weasley, you never fail to impress me...”

And he kissed him once again, because he had a whole, long boring day without him still in front of him, and he needed to remember his incredible taste and his undoing scent.

“Malfoy... Draco... stop it... gods, man... it must be over an hour now... and by this rate we'll never leave...” Ron told him a bit breathless between a never-ending series of rather passionate kisses, but as he was quite unable to extinguish the smile in his eyes, Draco just shrugged in a typical Malfoyian style:

“Oh, well... I dare them to proceed without me... I should be so lucky.”

And kissed him thoroughly one more time, taking no objections.

Clothes sorted out, they left the room; the hands they held dissolving only as the door opened and Ron thought it was funny because - a bit recklessly, really - he certainly didn’t remember placing any kind of privacy charm on it – and now there was one, but he was willing to shrug that off because it must have been Draco then, who had the presence of mind, it would be a Malfoyian thing to do. Or maybe these rooms in a Manor came with one by default, like the Weasleys children’ rooms did since the boys reached the age Molly no longer wished to know what they were up to.

Except... he stopped by the door and his nostrils flared as he had caught a scent of something that was definitely _not_ there before and came with no explanation. He had smelled that once before, earlier on this very day, and he remembered it, because it was a very fresh smell and somehow wonderfully natural among the suffocating mixture of too-sweet ladies’ perfumes and heavy men’s colognes. He frowned for a minute and paid a thoughtful look to his blond lover, who seemed oblivious to the scent and was too busy settling the last of details of his once more glamorous attire. He needed to tread carefully.

“How much does your wife know about us, Malfoy?” he asked calmly.

 


	52. Take me to Church 4/4 - Many faces of love

_"Oh, tonight,_

_you killed me with your smile._

_So beautiful and wild,_

_so beautiful and wild."_

 

Reamonn, Tonight

 

Astoria ran. She didn’t know where, she’d be hard pressed to even remember why, but she had to be... some place else. To think. To process what she had just witnessed. To breathe. To calm down. All of those things and some more she had no mental strength to remember. Her mind was all over the place and her heart was beating in her throat like that of a captured deer. She had never felt so lost and confused in her life, it was as if a door of her calm, sheltered existence opened and she was suddenly standing on a threshold of the world saturated with wild, beautiful colours, strange, exciting noise and complete chaos.  

In the end her legs gave away under her. She wished she had a presence of mind to have disapparated, but she would have probably splinched herself in half, as distraught as she was. She was still at the Manor estate, that much she knew, the property was very well taken care of and there was no sign of neglect in the trimmed grass and the beautiful rose-bushes surrounding her. She collapsed on a soft green lawn, not minding the damage her glamorous white dress with hand-sewn pearls and diamonds was about to suffer, and tried to catch her breath. Merlin... where to begin?!

She had been looking for Draco everywhere, but she was very unfamiliar with the Manor and the jittery house-elves were of little help to her, nervously running around, serving the demanding guests and squealing at the very mention of “ _Master_ ”. It took her a while to figure out to figure out why and it wasn't until a young she-elf she managed to capture and was shaking like a leaf in the Autumn wind stuttered with evident relief “ _Oh, her Ladyship means the Young Master, Master Draco, not Ma-Ma-Master Lucius!_ ” that it finally downed on her what it was that had sent them all in a frenzy. But the little she-elf was not much help to her, she had not seen the Young Master anywhere, though she suggested that he might have considered refreshing up some, and in that case he would be found in his old quarters.

The she-elf had kindly pointed her the right way and almost tripped down the stairs backwards in pure shock when Astoria thanked her politely before she turned away in search of her husband with renewed vigour. She had never been to this part of the house and compared to the buzz that was in full bloom in the public area downstairs, the private Malfoy quarters were as quiet and abandoned as a tomb. Her footsteps felt heavy and disconcertingly silenced by the thick rugs as she walked through the ancient hallways, decorated in heavy riches of centuries-old money. With every step she took she felt as if she was trespassing on a forbidden territory, yet she acknowledged that she was allowed access – a tell-tale sign she was a Malfoy now, a part of the family. She could feel the looming, suffocating wards hanging about the deserted corridors and the stern Malfoys of the centuries past looked down on her from their portraits haughtily, some turning up their noses upon the sight as if she was somehow unworthy of their solemn company so insultingly alive, others shamelessly perusing her with undisguised interest, whispering to each other blatantly from one portrait to another.

There must have been a hundred rooms, she thought in awe, and she had honestly never seen a house so big – nor so gloomy, she thought quietly. All that gold and ornaments, ancient statues, vases and armours, thick carpets and heavy drapes were beginning to make her disoriented and when she felt a headache blooming at the back of her head, she had all but decided to abandon her search... but then she finally heard something that sounded like human voices, coming from the room at the very end of the dark corridor. She tip-toed to the door and with a heart fluttering in her chest, she put her ear on it. There was definitely someone in there and she thought she had heard something like a moan.

She knew she shouldn't have, she knew the room was probably warded and she was only going to bring undesired attention to herself – but curiosity and a strange feeling of Fate made her put her fingers around the door-knob. In a last-moment flash of reason she cast a disillusionment charm on herself, because she would have had a hard time explaining what she was doing in the private quarters uninvited to anyone but her husband – and then she turned that door-knob. From that point on, there was no turning back.

Much to her surprise, the door give way immediately – no wards, no privacy charms, not even a silencing one – and she slipped in as quietly as she could and closed the door behind her. And froze still as if someone had nailed her to the ground. She barely managed to take in the details of the beautifully adorned room that could not have been in a starker contrast with the dark corridor that led to it, as it was elegant and decorated with superb taste in predominantly mahogany and green shades, the sunlight pouring through the large French window giving it the spacious look and feel of an indoor garden. She subconsciously took in the details, such as a sight of a massive, intricately decorated desk against the wall, with shelves upon shelves of books all around it and a large four-poster bed with heavy silver-green drapes in the most distant corner of the room, looking incredibly majestic and comfortable all in one – but really, she only had eyes for one thing: she seemed to have found her husband.  

Or someone that looked like him. Because the man in front of her awe-struck, frozen eyes, was nothing like her proud, self-possessed husband. His impeccable, priceless robes were torn down the middle to mere rags and the elegant aristocratic man she married was nearly gone. He was pressed into a wall by a very tall man, half undressed, with exposed, impossibly wide shoulders and before she ever noticed the fiery hair she knew it had to be him – hardly anyone could make Draco look smaller in comparison. But it was her husband’s face that captured her eyes like a flame would the reckless moth and she could no longer take her eyes off it. She had never seen such an expression on anyone’s face and for her beautiful cool husband to wear it, was incomprehensible to her... and incredibly enchanting.

There was hunger and need there, as if the flaming head, currently buried into the side of his neck, was giving him something he could not speak of, but which he craved desperately. His silver eyes were half lidded and she could see them glow like moonlight from between the silken eyelashes casting long shades down the chiselled cheeks. There was a stunning mixture of emotions in his expression, something that made him look predatory and hurt and raw and surrendered all in one, and from the bony fingers sunk into the red hair and pulling onto the lustrous locks almost forcefully, she could guess he just couldn’t get enough from his fiery lover.

The large hands of Ron Weasley had moved to cup her husband’s pretty face and they began kissing in earnest; not the loving, devoted kissing Draco had introduced her to, but something that looked nearly as if they were feasting on each other, their mouths barely allowing for breathing, the air filled with the sound of flesh fighting for dominance and barely held back moans and whimpers. Until Draco whispered a hungry “ _More_...”, his usually calm, haughty voice breathing urgency and need like she knew she could never make him feel, and the redheaded devil took charge from then on as if her beautiful husband had no say in it.

The ginger head sunk on his lover’s neck and began doing... something, Astoria couldn’t really see, but it made Draco gasp for air and whisper torn curses and pleas for more - “ _don’t stop... oh, fucking Merlin, Ron, don’t you dare stop..._ ” His words alone were enough to make Astoria blush from head to toe – those were no words of a gentleman, for Heaven’s sake! - but then the redhead started talking to her husband, words she could barely hear, hardly above a whisper, but she was on a road to damnation now and she had to hear them, so she moved closer and...

God, dear God, in her life she had never heard such filth coming out anyone’s mouth, words about... doing things to Draco... to his privates... with his mouth... oh, how incredibly dirty... He called him his _“_ _blond god_ _”_   and spoke about kneeling in front of him and... serving his... carnal needs and... oh, sweet Merlin, how very impossible and terrifying and terrific it all was! And it was making Draco all crazy, she could tell, and herself... gods help her, she was all flushed and tense and... couldn’t stop staring, something inside her melting at the sight of her husband getting undone by another man into this... person, so open and vulnerable and human and weak... and alive! Merlin, how Draco came to life under this man’s fingers! - as flushed and glowing and alive as she could never hope to see him outside of this room, this shelter they had picked for their love...

As more of her husband’s body got revealed, she could only stare; she had hardly ever seen a naked male torso in real life, just the pictures in the magazines Daphne sometimes giggled over and Astoria only paid a quick glance to, because they always made her breath race with excitement and she was always jittery and restless afterwards. But this, here, before her, was a real man, her husband and he was beautiful. His perfect, unblemished complexion was tinged pink under the strong hands exploring him roughly, wantonly, in a way that nearly made her swoon and then those strong fingers found a way into her husband’s mouth and Draco just devoured them as if he couldn’t wait to own a piece of his lover... Astoria could see a flicker of that gentle tongue she had a taste of working the fingers slowly, lovingly, and all that slow seduction with that ungodly mouth she had experienced herself was making her all weak in the knees by the sight alone. She was not the only one – when those long strong fingers, now very wet, finally escaped their gentle fleshy prison, the man’s “ _enough, goddamn you..._ ” was breathless and tense.

But when she saw where his hand disappeared next, her legs nearly gave way and her hand flew to her mouth to stop a choked sound from revealing her presence. Not caring one bit for the elegant wedding robes, that must have cost a fortune, the red-headed brute simply tore and damaged everything in his way, until his fist sunk between the sorry remains of the once stylish clothes, right on top of that bulge in her husband’s trousers she that made her mouth dry, and her husband threw his head backwards and gave a loud wanton shout that would forever stay etched into Astoria’s memory, because she had never heard a voice that sounded more like raw need and surrender all in one.  

She saw the redhead take him... _it_ ... in his hand and... Merlin and Rowena have mercy, it was the first time she saw... one and it was big and dark purple and how was she supposed to... once they were far enough to... But her thoughts died before they fully formed in her head when she saw the redhead... take care of it... _ohdeargod_ , how very... breathtakingly... exciting... It fit perfectly into the his giant fist and he was moving it, slowly at first, and then with spellbounding, intense pace that made Draco gasp and chant his name and rock his hips like a man possessed, stuttering pleas and broken profanities with no control whatsoever... and all the while the redhead spoke to him in a strained, quiet voice, whispering absolute bone-melting filth that shocked Astoria to the core, making her strangely faint and hot all over until she found it hard to breathe.

Just to imagine him... do all those things... kneel before her husband and take him... it... into that soft generous mouth that looked made for... oh, god, what was she thinking, she shouldn’t be thinking about this, shouldn’t have even been here, shouldn’t have felt so.... sensitive and nearly... swollen in that secret place between her legs that just itched to be touched and she couldn’t, not now, for god’s sake, so she just squeezed her legs together and let Ron Weasley’s vulgar words and hypnotic voice melt down every bit of her decency until she felt as filthy and needy as her husband did, begging for release and yearning for... it... this swollen shaft inside her, stretching her impossibly, making her nipples burst and she had to touch them, she had to, if only through the fabric and _god_ , did it feel good, it almost made her cry out and she had to... again... she would just brush against the hard, needy peaks lightly, fingers barely touching the fabric as she circled above them in the same rhythm with her husband’s body ramming into that merciless fist... again... because he was so bloody gorgeous being so undone and in love... again... because it felt so insanely good, because she needed to, needed to... once more... _ohsweetmerlinandrowena, what -_

“ _Ron... oh, bloody hell, Ron...”_ she heard her husband's final litany of surrender, but the worshipping strained yelp sank into the background as her hand flew to her mouth in a last moment's attempt to stop a loud cry when a sudden force of her own release caught her completely off-guard. She had never... she had no idea what to expect and she collapsed against the wall, as her legs bucked underneath her and that blessed hand, pressed tightly around her mouth, was the only thing between her and the unimaginable humiliation of being discovered. She couldn’t even breathe properly, the Universe seemed to have gone dark and out of focus and when she finally came to herself, she was completely boneless and strangely relaxed, almost apathetic, as if her whole world was in ruins and she was just sitting there, unable comprehend where to turn next, because nothing really mattered.

As she was leaning against the wall, her blood running wild like a river of fire and unable to catch her breath, random thoughts were floating around her head like restless bees and she was unable to catch one and hold on to it for long enough to make something out of it. She was in love with her husband, clearly. And not just a little. Not a girlish crush she used to have on him until the very moment he kissed her, but madly so; to the point that watching him with another man didn’t even bother her as long as she got to watch him come undone as well. It... _turned her on_ , as the romances for young witches carefully put it, though she couldn’t understand how could someone package such an incredible whirl of feelings and overload of sensations into such boring words. Ever nerve in her body was tingling with sensation, now that it was over she could feel the heat and pleasure spreading all over her body like a sensuous tide and it was all so very... exciting and... god, it was wet.

And, of course, nobody told her it was going to be like this. Once again, Maman completely failed to do her duty when it came to her and whatever of it Daphne knew, she wasn’t sharing. _That bitch_ , Astoria thought, and a strange mixture of satisfaction, excitement and shame flooded her at the thought that she was breaking the confines of her small, sheltered world and vocabulary in such an inappropriate manner.

She knew she should have moved then, use the moments when they were distracted, so deeply immersed into each other that they knew nothing of the outside world – and slip out, trying her best to forget what she had witnessed. She had tried to, she god-honest made the effort to move, but before her melted legs decided to cooperate, something Draco had said caught her attention and she froze:

“My mother had us bonded,” the blond had said and his words echoed through the room and through Astoria's cluttered mind. So Narcissa Malfoy knew. And she approved. But why?! How could she?

Surprisingly enough, it hurt more than her husband admission of not loving her and she felt strangely betrayed by the woman, who instructed her to call her Mother and was so evidently never prepared to give Astoria's marriage a chance.

“She only did it to protect you -” the blond said quietly and as those words seeped in, it all somehow made more sense and it had made Astoria feel a little better. Perhaps it wasn't a betrayal after all, but merely concern for her son's happiness. But to choose bonding... Bonding, the most sacred of all rituals, meant to tie two souls together. Lovers. Brothers. People who couldn't imagine a life without one another. Marriage was plain and boring compared to bonding, even hand-fasting, reserved for those hapless souls who could never hope to marry but desperately wanted to, paled in the face of this sacred, ancient ritual. Astoria had never known of anyone being bonded, but in the romances for young witches bonding was always the highest form of two hearts joining and if there was any truth in those overly-romanticized semi-legends, a couple, joined by a bond, could feel each other's emotions through time and space and would perish on the same day.

But for whatever reason she had done it, Narcissa apparently never bothered to mention it to the redhead, his surprise seemed genuine - as was his smile when Draco told him in a quiet, nervous voice there was no way out.

“I know,” was all the redhead had said, calmly as if he had somehow, in the space of seconds, become resigned with the fact that his life and his fate were now bound to his lover’s... and then he laughed. And his laughter... it was something... she's never even heard a sound like that before, people from well-to-do families didn't laugh with their heads thrown back, their laughter didn’t spill like a shower of golden rain from the skies, she’s never heard a warmer, happier sound in her life and it didn’t surprise to see how it affected Draco – she could see his eyes light up like stars in devotion and love, just before he hid his face back into his shoulder and murmured something about not wanting to lose him.

And Astoria god-honestly wanted to hate the stunning redhead when she watched him play with her husband’s blond hair and tell him quietly how he left it all behind to be with him. She had tried to wake up her jealousy, when she saw them kiss again, gently at first and then with growing passion, as if their love was a wave that, once set in motion, could not be stopped. She had tried – and failed. There was nothing but pure awe and excitement flowing through her when she watched them go from slow, tender intimacy, as if they were tasting each other for the first time, to intense, needy clinging to each other with their rough, breathless kisses and shameless touches until Draco sunk onto his knees in front of the redhead and begged for... it.

And she should have run at that point, she should have at least tried to save her sanity but she was spellbound, immobilized and completely immersed into all that hot violent passion she had fantasized about but she never really saw it take place in real life. She was bewitched by the sight of the blond head moving between the redhead’s legs as if her proud, gorgeous husband delighted in paying homage to his favourite god; she foolishly tried to imagine how it felt for the redhead, reduced to stuttering, to be worshiped by Draco Malfoy on his knees, and the idea had left her flushed from her cheeks to her toes and completely melted inside.

And when Ron Weasley picked up her husband and forcefully delivered him onto the magnificent bed in the corner, she shuddered in excitement and only had a passing moment of sanity, when the voice in her head told her “ _This is your chance, pick up what’s left of your pride and run, Astoria!_ ” – but it was gone before she cared to miss it and she already sneaked to the bed, as close as she dared to come, to watch them, to hear them, to savour, to inhale and to share what they had, because she knew she was never going to get it on her own.

She saw how much it had meant to Draco, when his fiery lover fiercely demanded he touched no one else... like this, on this day, their day; and her heart ached quietly when she saw on his face how moved he was and how right he found it and how much more he wanted to give him. She heard the blond seduce his lover with quiet words that this was his childhood room, his bed, their bed, that there was to be no one but them on it, ever; and throughout a hot, whispered confession on how long he had been fantasising about his red-headed god on this very bed, that unstoppable, merciless heat washed all over her like a treacherous tide once more and her very skin seemed to prickle with desire. As soon as she saw Ron Weasley spread her husband's legs and slowly lower his head between them, to finally give Draco what he seemed to crave the most, Astoria was past denying how very flushed and... gods... turned on she was.

And all the blood crashed against the confines of her body when she saw that soft mouth open up around... there... and he _licked_ Draco... sweet Godric and Rowena... he actually _licked_ him... _there_ . Between his... his... round, fleshy buns. Not just once, but over and over again, those long adept fingers keeping him still and... open until... _motherofgod_ , he slipped in, with his tongue and his strong fingers, tasting and touching something inside the helpless blond that made him throw his head back, made his body arch like a bow and a thin sheen of perspiration covered his torso like a dew as he writhed underneath his lover in hopeless attempts to get more... of something, Astoria didn't know what, but Ron Weasley seemed to have it and was only feeding it to her husband in small portions... because he could... because it seemed to turn him on to have Draco beg for it. But clearly, he was a man in love and he could only take it so far.

Astoria saw those blue eyes darken like a tempest right before he pulled... it out of what was left of his clothes and... Merlin it was _enormous_ , he wasn't going to... was he?! Draco couldn't _possibly_ ... It turned out that Draco very possibly could and would and couldn't wait to. As soon as the redhead rammed into him with his... engorged... _godhelpher_ ... member... and a helpless “ _Oh, god, gorgeous... I can't last long..._ ” rolling off his lips, the obnoxiously beautiful sweat-covered body of her husband nearly arched off the bed and the wanton shout he gave was such an impossible mixture of need and pleasure that Astoria instantly closed her eyes tightly not to see him getting so ravaged and abused by that red-headed beast between his legs, pounding him into a beautiful debauched mess of raw want and screams, because it was... messing with her head, doing things to her body, blooming with sensation, and she was rapidly losing herself in the liquid desire flooding over everything she had been bred to be.

She was desperate not to lose her self control like she did earlier and... just... dissolve with such humiliating urgency – but it was all in vain. She had come too close, she had gone too far and standing by her husband's bed, with her breath hitched and her eyes closed, unable to block the bone-melting sounds of Draco's surrender, she was dying to give in, to allow herself to be swept off her feet by a flood of her own juices rising in her body like a toxic, infectious tide, leaving her helpless and oh, so very defenceless. If only Maman hadn't raised her in such ignorance and kept her so sheltered, perhaps she would have found a way to save herself, but like this...

She had already doomed herself following her beautiful, mysterious husband and his decadent lover all the way to here, to the end of the road, where she could no longer escape that deprived need that burned her to ashes from inside, making her so raw and needy she couldn't hope to move without causing her body to short-circuit again and... collapse around her own release. So really – that was that, there was no way back and as she realized she didn't have anything left to lose, she slowly opened her eyes and let them find and feast on her husband's pretty face. And Draco Malfoy's coming face was to die for.

She could barely control her breathing while she watched that beautiful, aristocratic face covered in perspiration; head thrown back and trashing about in a desperate pursuit of ever elusive ecstasy he was brushing against, his swollen lips, tinged pink, whispering one urging plea after another “ _please, Ron... I need... I need... godyespleasethat... oh, you beautiful redheaded motherfucker, just like that... give it to me, cause I'm dying for it... I never get enough..._ ” as that massive... _cock_ , god, she could barely name it, that massive, angry looking cock speared him hard and deep, again and again, pounding into him brutally, ravaging him completely until Draco of the House Malfoy was nothing but a garbled mess of broken yelps of begging and mindless expletives, a devoted slave to his lover, keening around his worshipped name, until, finally...

“ _Ohmerlinfuckingchrist_ , Ron!!!”

His body arched off the mattress and his silver eyes opened into a world beyond, staring straight through Astoria, but not seeing a thing. He was so impossibly beautiful in his other-worldy bliss, that she nearly fainted in her aching desire to touch him. She didn't know it was possible to want someone as much as she wanted him and she could no longer help herself... she needed to... do something, get a hold of him... somehow, touch him; she needed to touch him, just a part of him, just for a second, or she would die of yearning on the spot, so her shaky fingers crawled near the long blond hair spilled on the pillow and as soon as they sunk into the warm silken strands she might have blacked out a little.

She came to her senses what felt like an eternity later, during which the time seemed to have slowed down impossibly, making her feel every nerve ending in her body come to life with tingling, warm, humiliating ecstasy that felt insanely good and made her incredibly weak. She was kneeling by the bed, leaning on it, not 2 feet from her beautiful husband, still trying to catch his breath underneath a man that had just reduced him to a stuttering mess - and she couldn't even move. She felt boneless and destroyed and couldn't do anything, not one bloody thing to move her empty muscles, leave the room and take her defeat with her. Instead she just sat there, listened to the rustling of the sheets and the sighs and grunts and other little sounds that came with love-making coming to completion and waited for the feelings of shame and betrayal to hit.

“I love you,” she suddenly heard a voice so low, she could barely make out the words. Strangely, it was the redhead who had said it and his voice was so tender and insecure and loving, as if she was having the first taste of these words in his mouth and she felt the first pang of bitterness spread through her chest. Of course he did. This was in no way one-sided, she saw Draco watch him as if he was his most prized possession, but it was the redhead who followed him here, all the way into his new life, risking god-knows-what and it was him who got to say the words. He loved him, of course he did... she just somehow, stupidly, never expected to hear him say it; and now that he did the whole devastation behind these words hit her harder than Draco's confession ever did.

This man loved her husband, quietly, but stubbornly and her husband could hardly hide he was crazy about him to Heaven and back. On top of that they had been bonded and there was no room in their tightly-knit relationship for her. When the pain hit, it was sharp, unexpected, straight to her heart. She had to get out of here, disappear and never come back. What had she been thinking? How could she have ever hoped to learn something about Draco that would make her understand him better and maybe make herself more.... interesting to him!? How very naive and stupid of her! She had only hurt and crippled herself in the process and suddenly she felt dirty all over and terribly corrupted.  

Not only she had let her atrocious, sick curiosity take over to a point that she ignored all the rules of lady-like conduct she had been so carefully brought up to live by; she had given in, into this... terrible temptation of watching her husband being seduced and... manhandled and... god, she couldn't even think about it now without blushing furiously and she must have been cursed, because even now that dreadful snake of desire that had been startled to life inside of her, coiled in the pit of her belly with a cruel vengeance. What was it about her husband that it made her forget herself so dreadfully?

She knew how innocent she had come to this marriage and it hasn't even been consummated but she was already feeling as if she was neck-deep immersed into a sea of new sensations and revelations that should only come with being intimate with someone. And yet she felt as if she had experienced this... sex... somehow, without ever being touched and it had messed up beyond belief. Part of her found her own behaviour absolutely atrocious and entirely unacceptable... yet a part of her was desperate for more and that evil, cursed part of her couldn't wait for the real thing, for their wedding night, to feel those long, elegant fingers on her skin. The very thought made her shiver.

He... was toxic. He had poisoned her with that one kiss and now she was infected with that terrible love that was making a complete different person out of her and that new Astoria scared her. She needed to be far away from him, to think, to pass decisions, to see if there was a way she would ever feel like her old self again.

 _“_ _Leave me breathless....”_ she had heard Ron Weasley whisper a quiet melody into her husband's hair; the blond lying in his arms and pressing into him like there was no place he'd rather be, and her heart squeezed mercilessly in her chest, because she knew that song, she had learnt of it from her Muggle-born school-friends ages ago and she knew it spoke of timeless love - “ _let my wounds turn into scars beside you... let me wake up with my arms around you... never let the world come in between us... guard my dreams, my soul, my heart for all times..._ ” she remembered - and she knew she could die happy if someone whispered it in her ear, thinking of her. She had to run away from that warm voice, from that tender song, not meant for her, because it was breaking her heart to pieces and got tears pooling in her eyes. So finally she gathered strength enough in her rubber legs to get up as quietly as she could, thankful to high Heaven that her disillusionment charm held, and she hurried out of the room. She had cast a privacy charm behind her without even thinking, because her mind was all over the place and she picked up her long wedding dress and ran like the wind to be out of this infernal place where she had lost herself completely.

So now she sat here, lost somewhere in the Malfoy gardens, under a glorious sun of her wedding day, without the faintest idea of what was she to do. She knew she could get out of this marriage, she only had to ask Draco – and she looked into his eyes when he made the offer and she believed him to be sincere – and she would be a free woman. And a laughing stock of the entire wizarding England. A burden to her parents, a victim to her gleeful sister once again. In love with the one man she would have left behind – and no one would ever compare. So... this was not an option. Life with Draco it was, then.

What would it be like by the side of this intriguing man? She had seen his cold, impeccable façade – and she had seen it crumble and reveal a wonderfully sensual, passionate man inside. Yet she was no closer to solving the mystery of him: how can he bear to be one person on the outside and a completely different man in the arms of his lover? How does one bring this other Draco to the surface? - because she was positive that was the man she fell in love with, she could feel the warmth and the passion behind his kiss and it was _this_ person, the real Draco Malfoy, she had fallen for.  

How could Ron Weasley, the one person who was in every way incompatible with her husband – a so-called blood-traitor from an rivalling, impoverished family, a married man - _a man!_ \- with nothing to his name but a glorious past and a smile that could melt the ice off the Antarctica – how could that person just look at her husband with those deep blue eyes and have his icy armour melt on the spot? If only she could ask him! Oh, what good would it do to know, she was running crazy with all these questions she could never hope to get answers to and she was no less miserable than before!

Draco Malfoy drove her right raving mad, his alluring, lonely beauty did, so did the mysterious, passionate man under his polished surface and in her quest to reach out to him, to find and feel the real him, to figure him out, she had discovered depths to herself she would never think dwelt under the surface. She wasn't quite certain she liked this new person; this girl that sneaked behind her husband, secretly watched him doing... things, _very inappropriate things_ with his lover and getting so pulled into the game of seduction and intimacy that she managed to... get over-excited. Oh, for god's sake she couldn't deny it, not even now, how very desperate she was to repeat the experience, to have that fire running down her body once again, perhaps to see her beautiful husband leaning over her and whispering all that godforsaken... wonderful... filth she now knew he could utter and that was somehow, inexplicably making her melt like butter on the inside.

Merlin, how could she ever go back and look him in the eye; observe him sneak covert glances in the direction of his lover, knowing just what he was thinking... the very thought of what he _could_ be thinking of made her blush crimson and shiver in unforgivable yearning all at once. Oh, but they were magnificent together, weren't they, she wasn't sure she would even be up to the role, she had no idea where to... start with Draco and with a sudden pang of panic she realized how very much she was counting on him to... take care of things.

What if he had expectations about her... about them...?! She would never live up to those, she couldn't! Even if she was more experienced, even if the redhead hadn't set the bar so damn high with that soft, generous mouth of his and his... temper in bed, he still held his heart. The redhead could kiss her husband into a stuttering mess, he could whisper him a silly, corny, romantic song and have him fall in love with it and he was the one who could have the blond say he'd love him to the day he died in front of hundreds of people - and she could do none of those things... Dear god, the more she kept thinking about it, the more miserable she was. How could she ever go back to him, with nothing to offer and nothing to receive? It was all such a glorious lie, how could she survive that; she couldn't...!

“They're looking for you, you know,” a warm voice spoke behind her and nearly startled her heart out of her chest. She didn't even have to look who it was, only one man had a voice as warm as a liquefied honey. But what was he doing here, how did he find her, why come looking for her?!

“How did you find me?” she blurted out the first thing that came to mind and as she turned around to face him, she saw the summer sun turn his silken red hair into a river of fire and a small smile appeared in the corner of his mouth. He was exceptionally... attractive. She could hardly blame her husband for falling for him so spectacularly.

“I put a tracing charm on you when I kissed your hand earlier,” he explained calmly and when he saw her shocked expression, the tiny smile bloomed into a fully-fledged one. “It's my job. Draco's father wasn't lying when he implied I was an employee – though he didn't phrase nearly as graciously – officially, this is what I am. But you know better,” he spoke with disarming honesty and when he looked at her from close up, she sort of forgot how to breathe: he really had the most stunning blue eyes she had ever seen. Why, oh why couldn't she hate him, things would be so much simpler like that!

“Then you know...” she blurted out, feeling her cheeks flush with vicious colour; silly, really, because she certainly didn't have as much to blush about as _some_ people!

“I know you were there... I smelled your perfume and I knew. I don't know how much you saw, but I doubt you've seen the whole of it. Even if you were to stand there from the first moment to the last, you would have still not seen the whole of it,” he said softly. “Draco and I go... deeply. Too deep for words,” he added quietly.

“Is there even room for me, between you?” her biggest concerned burst out of her before she could stop it. “I saw enough, I saw how very... infatuated you two are with one another, how very intimate – what am I to be if not the fifth wheel?”

“Draco needs you,” Ron said unexpectedly, shocking her blue eyes wide open. “He may not know it yet, but he needs you, someone like you and he's lucky that it's you. He needs to be a proper Malfoy, he needs a wife to be proud of, he needs a child to fall in love with and put all his hopes upon and to worry and fuss about. He has been terribly lonely for most of his life, you see. It is out of that yearning to be paired to someone, to have someone... there for him, that he sought me out, again and again, until I gave him what he didn't know how to ask for. But even I cannot replace you,” he looked at her so sincerely it took her breath away.

“True, he would have been happy with me, not knowing what he'd be missing out on, but _I know_. I know what it means to have family, to be a father, to look into your newborn's eyes and see the whole new Universe born, a world of opportunities to set things right, to feel part of a destiny, larger than your own life. I know... and I'd never have him miss out on it,” he said firmly.

“He could never parade me in public the way he proudly holds you; he could have never looked into his father's eyes and think _“_ _I owe you nothing, not anymore_ _”_ had he let down his family for me; you give him a chance that one day he would be able to put his child into his mother's lap and thank her quietly for saving his and our entire world – in short, you are more important than you give yourself the credit for,” he smiled into her awed eyes.

“With you, he has a future, his family does - and family matters above all when you're a Malfoy! - so don't you dare to sell yourself short! I bet you already love him, I bet you do; I saw him kiss you and I know that kiss – he just kissed the heart out of you, didn't he? I only had to look at you afterwards to know... you looked perfectly... smitten, if you don't mind me saying so. It is so, so easy to love him when he wants you to, isn't it? And have no doubt, little lady, he wants you to. I know my... I know him. And if you give him a chance, he could make you very happy.”

“But how do I make him happy?” she breathed out and waited for his answer wit bated breath, because she got an impossible chance to ask him after all and if he didn't knew, no one would. And he knocked the breath out of her with one of his brilliant smiles that put the summer sun to shame and he spoke warmly:

“Oh, that's easy: just be yourself. That's how you first caught his eye, that's what he likes about people. He's sick of people trying to impress him, to yield to his opinions just because they're his - as if they didn't have their own; he likes some fire and defiance and showing some spine – possibly not with bored disdain, the way Parkinson does, but with the same grace his mother possesses. He loves class and wit and intelligent opinion – and he finds it very refreshing if someone is sincere. And loyal, you need to be loyal to him, never forget that – when you're together, you're a team, you two against the world, regardless of your differences in private. I don't know much about you, Astoria,” he looked at her kindly and thoughtfully, “but I believe you might already be all those things. I think you two have a good chance to make a splendid couple.”

“But at the end of the day he will still love you...” she quietly spoke out her defeat and saw his brilliant eyes turn dark.

“You asked me how to make him happy, not how to make him love you,” he said in a voice that came out tired and sad. “Had you asked me that, I would have told you the truth: I don't have a clue. I have _no idea_ how he came to love me, or I him, and that's god's honest truth. One moment we were spitting fire and insults at each other and in the next he's wrapped around me, my body and my heart like you wouldn't believe it. His love is... contagious, I just couldn't... I couldn't say no, I couldn't stay away. Who could? The way he loves... he's got a way of getting under your skin, asking for so much, giving so much... making one feel a million galleons worth. But do not wish for love like that,” he looked at her so darkly she shivered.

“The sacrifices I have to make every day to be with him are not for everyone's heart. My wife...” he paused, then shrugged and continued: “Oh, I suppose you will read it all in the headlines some time this week, I might as well tell you: Hermione's leaving me. It's amiable and all, but still... And my Harry...” this time he closed his mouth abruptly as if he had came to a last moment's realization that this was not only his secret to share. But Astoria read it all on his hurt, vulnerable face, full of guilt and her eyes got wide in recognition and awe. That was... _he_ was impressive.

“You cannot be me, there's no point in trying,” he finally said curtly. “You don't want to be me, trust me, regardless of how hungry you are for your husband's love. I was made for different things than you, we complete each other on a different level, in spite of what we were bred to be, rather than because of it. Sometimes what we have, is made of nothing but darkness, and it's hard not to lose the way. You asked me how to make him happy... and I told you, because you need to know.... but you have to know I never bothered with any of that, I didn't need to. Since the first time I kissed him he belonged to me. I marked him for my own and here we are today, all these years later, no longer trying to fight it. I've got Draco Malfoy running in my veins, lady, and now that we're bonded... you do know what bonding means, don't you?” her looked at her with the same lingering sadness she had noticed in his eyes before.

“Just from the romance books,” she whispered. “You're supposed to feel his deepest emotions and when he... when he's gone...” she couldn't even finish the dreadful thought. She had just come to realize that somehow, in the space of half a year, Draco Malfoy had become her light at the end of the tunnel and with him gone... she couldn't even imagine the darkness her world would sink in.

“When he dies, I die,” Ron finished her thoughts calmly. “That's how you see it, that's how everyone sees it. For me, however... dying with him means there's finally nothing more holding us apart, it's my chance to be with him for good. When we leave, we leave together,” he said simply. “For me it is the most appeasing, soothing thought ever.” 

And those words sent shivers down her spine. He had meant it, when he spoke of deep-running, dark love. She should have hated him, she should have... but she couldn't, she didn't. All she felt in his presence was quiet awe at the weight on his shoulders, at his magic that touched Draco Malfoy at his very heart, at this seemingly simple man that had more hidden facets to him than a priceless diamond.

“Come,” he suddenly took her arm underneath his and smiled so brightly as if he wasn't discussing his own death with her a moment ago. “Today is no time for those dark thoughts, it's your wedding day, lovely lady – and I reckon that after an hour or so of that tedious reception of gifts and praise, we've got a good chance of making this day your happiest ever.”

“Mr. Weasley...” she stopped him, before he could drag her away and she surprised them both with such an adamant action. “Oh, I don't even know how to call you, this is such an odd and awkward situation. Is Ronald alright, you think?”

“Ron,” he said simply and then smiled so radiantly she nearly forgot what she wanted to say. “Just Ron would do.”

“Well, “ _just_ ” Ron,” she emphasised and he threw his head back and laughed heartily at her innocent attempt at joking. “I am not ready to soil my new home and the beginning of my marriage with hatred and since I gather we are destined to spend a lot of time together, given your... special relationship with my husband, I suppose it would do me no good to make an enemy out of you,” she looked him deeply into those sapphire blue eyes of his and offered with a shy smile: “So let's be friends.”

She saw she had shocked him, but he recovered quickly and smiled appraisingly to her: “Taking my advice to heart, I see - just being yourself. ... Works for me,” he added without much thinking and nodded firmly. “Friends, then.”

And when she allowed him to fix her dress and take her back, holding her arm underneath his, he casually mentioned with a quiet smile, not quite hiding the edge underneath: “There are bets going on, on how long are you going to last as his wife, you know... People seem to think he’ll get tired of you quickly. Your sister, for example, has got you marked for under a year. I reckon it's going to be a lot longer than that... You're going to knock them _all_ off their feet.”

And suddenly she realized what an important victory she had scored with Ronald Weasley on her side.

~

“Draco! Merlin, son... finally! For goodness's sake, child...” his mother practically hissed at him in as livid a tone as a hushed conversation could take. “Have you got any idea of the time?! We've kept our guests waiting for nearly three times the break was supposed to take. As if your father wasn't distraught enough! I had to have him lie down, you know...!”

Lie down was Narcissa Malfoy's dialect for “ _knock him unconscious and sip a ultra-potent relaxing potion into the tea by his bed for when he wakes up_ ”, but this was no time for particulars; if it wasn't for her fast wits and quick refreshment in the form of canapés and chilled champagne she had come up with for the restless guests, this calamity of a wedding could already have been a scandal. First the groom went missing – and by the pink tinge in his cheeks and a certain glimmer in the silver eyes she had a pretty good idea what had he been up to, regardless of his once again immaculate attire – but this was no moment to reproach him, because bride as well seemed to have disappeared!

“Astoria is gone,” she told him in a voice that was not as calm as she would have wanted it to be and she immediately compensated for the distress in her voice with a big, radiant smile at one of the guests that wandered near. “You would not have been... reckless enough to mention the details of our little arrangement to her, I trust?” she spoke quietly, her attempt to talk casual quite more transparent than usual. Her son's silence was ominous and she paid him a horrified look:

“Oh, Draco... what have you done?! She's the one person that could still ruin this for all of us! How very foolish of you, son!” she hissed in impotent anger, but for once, her pretty, elegant son seemed oblivious to any kind of concern.

“She asked me if I loved her,” he said nearly matter-of-factly. “I told her the truth, we discussed it and she decided to stay with me nevertheless. If she is gone, this is not the reason.”

“Oh... I see. I suppose that's very... considerate of her... and of course, a wonderful news, darling,” Narcissa finally looked slightly more at ease than before, but then she paid a side-glance at her son and stressed firmly: “We still need to find her, though. This wedding must go on as planned and I will have no more fooling around during the official part, are we perfectly clear, dear?”

“Quite,” Draco mumbled, the marble cheeks even more flushed than before, and then he added almost as an after-thought: “I've got Ron on it, don't worry. There's nothing he can't do.”

And this child-like trust into his Gryffindor lover somehow brought a surprising smile on Narcissa's face: she had chosen well to have bonded them, she thought, suddenly pleased and with just a tad of relief. Her lovely boy certainly didn't seem to mind it and - oh, just look at him _glow_ today! And what else, if you please, mattered? It was also his day, he deserved to be happy!

“Oh, and... thank you, Mother,” Draco suddenly cut through her thoughts as if he was reading them and she was surprised and strangely moved to discover that a small smile in the corner of his mouth still had the power to make her feel better. “You know... for _everything_ ,” he added quietly, sincerely and it took everything Narcissa Malfoy was, not to close her arms around her child at that moment and kiss him on the brow lovingly.

“You're welcome,” she said a bit stiffly, to cover her emotions, and it was a god-given that she suddenly spotted a familiar fiery head at the back of the hallway and she was instantly all grace and charm again.

“And there they come,” she said, sounding all the way pleased and only Draco, who knew her exceedingly well, could tell how much of her light-hearted joy was actually pure relief.

“Madame.... Mother, I am so sorry,” Astoria hurried, “I went looking for Draco and I'm afraid I got quite lost and...”

“Say no more, dear,” Narcissa Malfoy said, because one glance at the flushed cheeks of the bride told her that there was more to the story that the girl was willing to share. “The property is quite big, it could have happened to anyone. Let us just hurry and resume, now that you're here.... Oh, Ms. Zabini, how lovely of your to have come,” she had already focused her attention on the task at hand and for all the tediousness of the procedure, Astoria was glad that she had something to occupy her mind with.

Every once in a while she sneaked a glance towards her husband; at his flawless marble complexion, courteous smile and impeccable posture and she would take her eyes off him quickly and blush crimson at the thought of how different she had seen him, how much more alluring he was with his head thrown back in ecstasy, with that pretty pale mouth whispering obscenities, with those elegant clothes turned to near rags, putting that stunning body on display. She couldn’t afford thoughts like that, for goodness sake, but she had no way of stopping her eyes escaping into his direction, as if they were spellbound to do so. She could feel the looming presence of Ron Weasley behind their backs and it made her feel strangely secure and she couldn’t help in admiring Draco’s inventiveness when it came to reasons he found to touch his tall, magnificent lover casually, as if he needed those small, nearly invisible touches to make it through this day.

Finally the last overly-enthusiastic visitor had given their sincere best wishes for the bride and groom and the guests were invited to take a seat behind the numerous, richly decorated round tables, while the bride and the groom were directed towards the long rectangular table, immaculately dressed in a stark white tablecloth that seemed to reflect the candlelight like a freshly fallen snow. They were facing the guests, but with all the classy décor on the table, the lustrous tabletop chandeliers, artistic flower arrangements, priceless china and utensils, polished to a glow, Astoria didn’t really feel as if she was set on display like a doll in the shop-window, as she feared she would be. Besides – at this point it mattered little to her; she was so tired, she would have set on a bench made of hot coals, just to rest her numb feet for a moment.

As soon as she sat down between Draco and her father, she felt a long narrow hand wrap around hers and when she looked at her husband in surprise, he simply gave her one of his enigmatic, small smiles and said quietly:

“All right there, darling? You seemed awfully pale for a moment.”

“Perfectly fine, thank you,” she said a bit rigidly, to cover up for all the electricity that flew through her at his unexpected touch, but she couldn’t really hide her cheeks blossoming red under his perusing smile. “I confess I had a moment – or two – of weakness standing there for what felt like hours but with some refreshment at hand I expect to recover promptly.”

“I certainly hope so,” he said with the same, tiny smile still hanging about his soft mouth. “We’ve barely just began. First, there is to be a feast with all the – horrid, I expect – speeches and then we are to open the podium with our wedding dance. Hopefully, after a few formal dances the atmosphere will relax a bit and most of the older guests would head home. I certainly hope we can steal away from the crowd for long enough to change into something more comfortable - I swear if I have to wear this stiff collar to the end of the evening, I’ll be ready to pierce someone’s heart with it, surely its edges are sharper than those of a dagger!”

And Astoria made a bad job of forcing back a giggle. Here he was, a picture of elegance and formality and yet he spoke to her so plainly as if they were sitting in one of the cute Parisian street cafés and have known each other for years and she couldn’t help smiling at him adoringly. But she remembered the words of Ron Weasley and decided that Draco Malfoy, her husband shall see her in a most splendid light this day:

“Husband dearest, I shan’t allow complaining on my wedding day,” she said flirtatiously and saw a spark of surprise and interest light up in his grey eyes, so she added quickly: “At least not until you’ve tried on a corset and wore high-heel shoes for hours, with everyone expecting you to still float on them as effortlessly as a Veela in the evening!”

He actually chuckled and his eyes lit up like candles in amusement before he replied quietly with one of his perfect eyebrows raised:

“Astoria, dearest, how unexpectedly... extravagant of you! Had I known of your fantasies, my lady, I might have married you sooner... Corset and high-heels on a man, really...” he murmured quietly looking her straight into the eyes, until she felt all the breath she had, leave her. “Some would call it kinky, you know.”

“Oh, sweet Merlin... But I didn’t mean to say...” she tried to object, but she didn’t have enough air in her to finish the sentence and those grey eyes were too deeply immersed into hers and that soft, pale mouth she desperately wanted to kiss was smiling at her from up close... oh, by Rowena the lovely, she was so lost in his presence, so ready to get lost in him... And when he unexpectedly leaned towards her and pressed a small, lingering peck into the corner of her mouth, she closed her eyes and, flooded with his fragrance, she might have melted into something barely tangible. When she finally had the presence of mind to open her eyes, she felt her every fibre alive with tingling expectation and he was still observing her with that small smile in the corner of his pretty mouth. He knew how badly she had it for him and there was nothing she could do about that.

“But I suppose it is only right to reveal your husband your deepest desires,” he spoke barely above the whisper. “Especially since you’ve had an opportunity to observe mine so spectacularly on display.”

She nearly fainted at his words... merciless Salazaar, but he was completely shameless! To bring that about... at their wedding table...

He was still holding her hand and his fingers around hers were suddenly much tighter.

“I didn’t...” she tried to object, but she couldn’t lie to his face to save her life and her voice died with her courage.

“Oh, but you did! Ron tells me, you did and he has no reason to lie. You were not supposed to... but you did. Now, how did that make you feel, my pretty little wife?”

Astoria was acutely aware that her father was sitting on the other side of her, currently engaged in a vivacious conversation with Draco’s mother, but still... Yet, when she looked into those hypnotic silver eyes, she couldn’t help the awful, embarrassing truth slipping out like a colourless snake:

“Nice...” she breathed out with barely any voice at all and saw his eyes grow wide in surprise. And then she was suddenly overwhelmed with a desire to tell him, to let him know the truth and share her god-awful addictive experience, because it was him who caused it, it was because of him she felt all these terrible inappropriate feelings and emotions washing all over her and turning a shy, innocent girl into a woman, burning with yearning:

“Nice...” she repeated with a whisper and could no longer stop a flood of her feelings in spite of his flabbergasted face: “And hot... and... oh, god, no one told me about... these things, you see... And suddenly, there you were and he was all over you and I’ve never seen two people... like this... At first I nearly died of embarrassment, but I just couldn’t leave, I’m sorry... but I couldn’t. I thought it was... oh, _nice_ just isn’t a word for it, but I don't suppose there is a single word to describe it... so very tender... you and him... together... the way he touches you... the way you let him... all that awful filth he says to light you up... and then lives up to it... you open up to him, you let him own you... I’ve never seen anything like that... he knows you so well and you let him so very near you... He's all fire and you just love to burn with him, don't you? I couldn't leave, seeing you like this – I couldn't. This was my one chance to see you, the man I married so... exposed – can you blame me?!”

“Astoria...” he started, but was suddenly cut short by a sharp, haughty voice behind them:

“And what, if you please, do two love-birds have to say to each other in such excited whispering? If you’re not careful, some might think it’s your first lovers' quarrel!”

Daphne. Astoria just closed her eyes and let the anger and disappointment wash over her. The one chance she had to lure her husband out of his shell and that... awful girl destroys it, making her look like a fool yet again. _Bitch_ , she though bitterly and with no remorse for once. But she suddenly shivered when the soft mouth touched her fingers and when she opened her eyes again, she was staring right into Draco’s smiling face, and she was stunned numb by the protective look in his eyes.

“Too right you are, Daphne...” he spoke with a drawl that could make a person feel as if they were barely good enough to clean his shoes. “I'm afraid I got foolishly... excited over all the loveliness my wife has to offer before the end of the day was near and now we're going to have to wait a whole long afternoon and well into the night, before we get to consume some of that... excitement. But you see, I just couldn't refrain from expressing my deepest admiration of her breath-taking appearance today and of her... exceptional personality. Don't you agree with me, Daphne? Don't you agree that your sister looks stunning today?”

He pressed another soft kiss onto Astoria's shaky fingers before he lifted his face to look at her sister and all of the sudden Astoria got a glimpse of cold-hearted Draco Malfoy everyone was warning her about. The look on his face was that of a icy cold storm, if there ever was one, and he looked so much like his scary father that if it was anyone other than Daphne, she would have certainly felt sorry for them. “ _When you're together, you're a team ,_ ” she heard the echo of Ron Weasley’s voice in her head and Daphne had foolishly put herself in a way of the terrible Malfoy protectiveness.

Her haughty sister was currently so pale she could have passed for a statue if it wasn’t for the nearly insane look in her feverish eyes.

“You know very well she’s not all that,” she hissed impolitely and barely had the decency to keep her voice down. “She never will be. She’s average. You’ve picked an _average_ wife, Malfoy, when you could have had...”

“Oh, do share, darling sister-in-law, who, in your esteemed opinion could have served better as my wife,” Draco wouldn’t let her finish and the voice, that interrupted her words, was so cold and full of disdain that Daphne instantly looked as if she was slapped in the face. “Parkinson, perhaps? Cold-hearted bitch I wouldn’t trust with taking care of a pigmy puff, let alone my child! Bulstrode? Please... Not even a proper pureblood and I certainly have no wish to get squished to death. _You_?” He leaned forward as if he was trying to make sure the blow was properly delivered when he whispered:

“You’ve been through every other wizarding bed in the country, darling... and you’re not even picky, I’m told. You – were _never_ an option. I’d sooner marry Weasley there than you and I can give you that in writing, if you like.”

By the time he was finished, her pretty pouty lips were shaking as if she was about to cry and it seemed like _coup de grâce_ when a tall figure of Ron Weasley appeared out of the thin air behind her and the redhead put one of his big hands around her shoulders: 

“Oh, there you are,” he spoke calmly as if he didn’t hold a nearly hysterical sister of the bride next to him. “I came looking for you as soon as I found out you were to be seated next to me. You look awfully pale, though, those endless receptions are murder, aren’t they? I’ll keep an eye on you for the rest of the day, then, just to be sure... We don’t want any... incidents, do we?” he looked at her sharply with those sapphire eyes and all she could do was nod and follow him meekly as if not even a shred of defiance was left in her. Astoria had never seen her so defeated and something alike pity moved in her heart.

They were sisters after all and their relationship could have been so very different, but it was as if Daphne was resentful towards her for not remaining the only child and it had struck Astoria deep in the soul when she had once overheard her mother trying to appease her raging with: “ _Oh, you, know, we were hoping for a boy to pass on the family name, but it was not to be_.” It seemed to her that no one, but her quiet father even wanted her in this world and it had been so all her life – until Draco Malfoy appeared in it, chose her out of so many, put her on pedestal and above all others. She could never repay him for that. She looked at him gratefully and as he brushed against her cheek with long fingers, his eyes back to their softer silver glow, he murmured quietly:

“I won't have anyone put you down. You're mine now. Malfoys take care of their own and... you really are the most extraordinary woman, aren’t you? Ron was right, you’re going to knock them all off their feet.”

She felt herself blushing at his praise and quickly said coquettishly to cover up for her embarrassment: “A lady must always try her best, I was told. As to the woman part... you married a _girl_ , Sir... I was hopeful you would take it upon yourself to make a woman out of me,” she confessed shyly, because she couldn’t quite forget how disdainfully he had looked at Daphne when he mentioned she was... promiscuous.

He raised an eyebrow and looked strangely entertained and pleased at the same time.

“I don’t think there could have been a more elegant way to share with your husband that you’ve never been... in the male company, dear - how very resourceful of you. Have no worries, my lady, in spite of those... preferences of mine you are well aware of, I’m perfectly able – and ready - to make a woman out of you, marrying with a different purpose would have made little sense. Though I must confess that I beginning to think that I might actually enjoy our... encounters more than I had initially hoped.”

She felt her heart fluttering in her chest like a caged bird and she couldn’t hold back, she had to tell him, so she gripped his hand tightly and asked quietly:

“Please... don’t give me false hope. Ever. I don’t want it. I would be ruined if I ever foolishly thought I could make you love me and you have the power to make me believe it, you know very well that you do. But please, don’t. We both know who we are, what we are, what we are doing in this marriage. You are here, probably at your parents’ bidding, to sire a child and continue the Malfoy line and I... I’m here because you are my Prince Charming, you’ve saved me from the marriage to a person I would have had no hand in choosing and – I can’t lie about that – I fell for you the first time I set eyes on you... though I came to believe I had no notion of love until you kissed me for the first time.

And now I can’t escape this love. And neither can you. It’s only sad your heart does not point in the same direction as mine does, but I suppose that can’t be helped. _He_ was here before I was and seeing you together... I meant what I had said before. I can’t blame you - you are made for this man and he is made for you. I can’t help loving you. You can’t help loving him. Let’s leave it at that and let’s try to build a home around it. But don’t ever try to give me a false sense of love, it would break me if I ever thought I could really have you... you know, the way he has you, nothing but bare soul and eyes full of love – and then to find out I was mistaken. It is not your fault that I gave you my heart, but I’m begging you to please, please treat it gently. It’s all I ask.”

She didn’t know where the courage came to say these words into his face and she saw that they touched him, even though he had yet to say a word. He was quiet for a while, while the food was served and only upon her repeated, miserable glances in his direction he seemed to have reconsidered, unexpectedly flicked his wand with a barely visible wrist movement and Astoria felt a privacy charm wrap around them just before he finally broke the silence:

“I don’t deserve you. I told my father that the first day I met you and he had nearly fainted at the unfathomable notion of a Malfoy not deserving something, someone, anyone he desired. But I truly don’t. If I was in any way a decent human being, I would have been sorry for you; sorry that our paths had crossed and that I had so recklessly robbed you of a chance to share this beautiful heart you own with someone who could return your feelings, because you deserve that more than any other women I had met. But I’m not decent; I’m me, a Malfoy, and we’ve never been decent. Therefore I’m glad that I’ve met you, because I am going to make you not only a woman, but a mother of my child and from what I’ve seen so far, I could not have wished for a finer woman to bear my son.

So I’m going to say this and I will say it only once: I don’t wish to give you false hope and you must never mistake my kindness and my admiration for true love. I’m not in love with you. I couldn’t be, even if we lived a thousand years. Perhaps, if he was never born.... but even then my heart would have yearned for something alike him. You have seen us together... yet you have no idea how he makes me feel. I only have to smell him... catch a scent of his presence and my heart starts beating at twice the rate. He can actually make me weak at the knees by just appearing in a distance. I crave him... desperately and all the time. I can only make it through this day because I’ve had proof of his... passion for me earlier and I was reminded that it echoes mine.

You have no idea how hard it is to share him. When he’s gone, he’s all I think about. When he’s here, I crave his touch all the time, my fingers fly in his direction incessantly and my heart does. The few weeks when he finished it, tried to let me go... I nearly perished. I could not find a single thing in my life worth living for without him, without his love.

I think the world of you, Astoria,” he looked at her solemnly, “I truly do. I’m lucky it’s you who had said “ _yes_ ” to my proposal – but without you, it would have been another. But without him, I’m... nothing. I’m thin air. Dissolved. Empty. Unclaimed. Incomplete. Alone. I am so bloody vulnerable I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. This is how being in love feels for me; vulnerable, frightened, exhilarated, devoted, yearning all the time, on fire with passion I can barely control, with all those god-awful scary feelings love inspires. But without it, I’d have no reason to live. He’s my reason. He’s my everything. 

Out of so many, my heart had picked a man, who’s tied to another world in so many ways that it’s nothing short of a miracle that I get to see him every day. But I’m not sorry. I couldn’t not have picked a man more right for me. When I’m raw, he’s tender. When I’m cold and angry at the whole world, he warms me up and calms me down. When I’m tired to the bone, he brings me to life. There’s not another person out there who would know me better and still love me. My mother comes close, but there are depths to a man his mother is not supposed to see and he knows the darkest pits of me. And still loves me. You cannot compete with him. No one can.

So have no fear that I’m trying to trick you – when I’m kind to you, it is because you deserve all the best I have to give and not because I’m pretending to love you. I... care about you, deeply, and once you give me a child, you will have become an indispensable part of my life – no matter what, you will always be my son’s mother. But much like my mother, I’m a practical man, used to make the best of every situation. I don’t believe you should pay for the fact that you would not have been my first choice. I will honour you, protect you, humour you and be the husband you’ll never want to renounce. I will do my best and foremost to make you happy. If only you respect my needs. And him... I need, Astoria. This marriage has no future without him.”

“I know,” she whispered, because she looked so solemn and determined that she was suddenly scared she had pushed him too far and she might lose what little grace she had gained with him. “I saw you together, remember... I know you do. And I will respect that. Always. We’re a team, right?” she tried shyly and was relieved to see a knowing smile light up his face.

“A team. Correct,” he said, sounding pleased and then added unexpectedly in a quiet, nearly tender voice: “Was that... exposed enough for you?”

When she nodded, he tied throat barely allowing for a whispered _“Quite... Thank you”,_ he simply closed his eyes in acknowledgement and exhale: “Good. I promised you honesty. But I can't let you much closer, Astoria, I hope you understand, I'd only hurt you. I can only handle one man so near my heart.”

And when she nodded numbly, still shaken from his unexpected willingness to share so much of himself with her, he let the privacy charm around them dissolve and said with a small smile on his face: “Good girl. Now - where would you like to go to our honeymoon, darling? Pick any place you like, it will be my pleasure to take you there.”

And there was his polished, polite façade again and it was there to stay until the rest of the endless feast. The plates kept on coming on and going off the table, but she could barely touch anything, deeply immersed into the fractured thoughts of her unusual marriage and the enigmatic man by her side, who had picked her for his bride. He was... incredible. And he was hers. By name only, of course. Because every time she glanced towards him as covertly as she could his eyes were inevitably glued to Ron Weasley, sitting a few places down the main table, in a position of a best man, though he was officially not one. It mattered little to any of them, she knew. They could have put Ron Weasley among the house elves and he would have taken it for Draco without objection, and her gorgeous husband would not have stared any less frequently in his direction. They could barely keep their eyes away from each other.

But Draco was a master of keeping up appearances, somehow still managing to hold a polite conversation with her and her super-excited mother, it was only Astoria who was a wreck and quiet to the point that her own mother hissed at her at first opportunity, when her husband had been called away:

“For Merlin's sake, Astoria, pull yourself together! I've taught you better than that! You've barely said a word the whole afternoon and with that unfortunate blush you've inherited from your father's side, you positively look like a country duckling! Show some wit and some spirit, child!”

It was little wonder that after an exhausting and bizarre day she had been through, the little spark of resentment, anger and frustration she had always felt towards her mother in the face of strange mixture of neglect and annoyance she was brought up with, flared to full bloom and Astoria no longer bothered to control it.  

“I appreciate your concern, Maman,” she had said as coldly as she could muster with blood sizzling at the edge of her skin. “But perhaps you should have thought of raising me into something less of a duckling earlier, instead of placing all your hopes on my beloved sister.”

She had seen her mother turn pale under her make-up and she continued with the same cool, composed voice: “But as things have turned out - it is I who had become a Malfoy, rather than Daphne dearest and I'm afraid I shall no longer permit this tone to be used when you address me, it might... irritate my husband, you see. _No one_ talks to Malfoy like that and like it or not, I am one now. I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to address me as an adult, a wife of Draco Malfoy, rather than a little girl you could scold freely.”

“Astoria...” her mother breathed out in shock, speechless, but her daughter was unrelenting for once:

“Yes, Maman. Still Astoria. But Astoria Malfoy, no longer a little girl one could afford to take no notice of and bully into meeting their wishes. My husband had promised me respect, I ask no less of you. If I don't wish to speak, I have my reasons, it has been an overwhelming day, there is still much of it left and I am tired. My husband had made a very good job of entertaining you and I didn't get the impression that he was much bothered by my silence. Quite the opposite – I think it would have bothered him if I chattered incessantly over nothing.”

“I couldn't have put it better myself,” came a slow drawl from behind her and Draco Malfoy leaned down to kiss his wife on the cheek in full sight of her flabbergasted mother. Then he slipped his fingers around her hand and murmured:

“Dance with me? I've got enough of this tedious feast and it's our wedding – they will have to join if we start!”

He pulled her to her feet with a gesture that didn't allow any objections and once she was pressed against his body, she found out she didn't really mind. He smelled deliciously, of things exotic and daring, and she felt a sudden profound desire to put her head on his chest for a while and just close her eyes. But he didn't give her a chance as if he was afraid she might get too comfortable so near his chest, so he just pulled her past her stunned mother onto the dance floor and threw a smooth “ _You have to excuse us, Madame, but I'm in grave need of your daughter's company and I confess myself quite anxious to be able to hold her in my arms once again”_ over his shoulder to which Astoria's mother couldn't reply with anything else but a slightly shocked, but obliging “ _But of course... she's yours now._ ”

Sore feet forgotten, Astoria floated like an angel in her long white wedding dress by his side and when she caught a passing glance of them in the mirror she was stunned to see what a splendid couple they made; there was a fire in her eyes and under her rosy cheeks, like she's never seen before and he looked like a dream captured in a man's body. She still couldn't quite comprehend that he had chosen her out of all girls, so many of them. As they reached the dance-floor, he turned her towards him effortlessly, and his hand slipped around her waist to hold her close. As her innocent blue eyes sought out his grey ones, she could have died happy this way, pressed against him, immersed into his wonderful scent, staring up into those silver eyes.

Naturally graceful, dancing was the one thing Astoria was ever better at than Daphne, every dance teacher they had ever had made her believe so and Draco Malfoy was a superb dancing partner. Just like he had promised, he made her the envy of every girl in the room as they were sliding and spinning across the dance floor as smoothly as if they were made of air. She had never felt so light, so protected and so full of joy than when she danced with her gorgeous husband, with his smiling face fixed upon her so stubbornly as if there was no one else in the room. Nearly anyone in the room could have sworn, they were a picture of love and devotion.

When after three dances they had paused for a moment and other dancing couples had already occupied the floor, Astoria was breathless and strangely exhilarated, as if dancing with him poured new energy and strange carelessness down her veins.

“Are you happy, darling?” her enigmatic husband asked quietly and when she nodded, still quite out of air, he seemed pleased.

“Are you?” she blurted out next and saw him raise an eyebrow and give one of those characteristic small smiles that indicated she had surprised and entertained him yet again.

“I am... content, to be able to give you a wedding you deserve, dear. I believe I promised to make you a happy woman and I am perfectly willing to dedicate as many dances as it takes to this purpose.”

“But you are _not_ happy...” she said quietly and saw his eyes turn just a shade darker.

“No,” he said calmly, but there was a barely visible tinge of sadness under the granite grey of his eyes. “I’m not happy, Astoria. I’m only happy when I’m with him... possibly wrapped around him,” he whispered with a sudden cheeky smile and had her blushing to her hairline.

“Oh, my... well... in that case... that needs to be remedied at once then,” she said quickly to cover up for her embarrassment and after a minuscule pause she continued. “I shan’t take another step in these torturous shoes, my feet are positively killing me and this lovely tiara of your great-grandmother’s weighs a ton. You don’t think we would be trespassing on the rules of the etiquette much if we slipped off to change into more comfortable clothes? No? I didn’t think so. I’m rather tired and clumsy today and this dress, however lovely, is dreadfully complicated. It might... take a while and I’m sure in the mean time your... companion would be willing to... enthusiastically give you a hand at getting rid of that murderous collar you had complained about earlier.”

“Astoria - ” he said, nearly speechless and something akin profound admiration and gratitude tinted his grey eyes silver.

“Say no more,” she lifted her arm to stop him, because her resolve to see him happy this evening took more out of her than she was able to acknowledge. “You were honest with me, yet gentle enough to leave me with a sense of self-worth. I know what I’m doing... and you told me what you need. This can only work if I acknowledge your needs and let you breathe some. Besides – he was here before me, it is only right. Go now. Your duty to me isn’t until after midnight... though I will confess I hope to see you return to me a tad sooner, I should very much like to share another dance with you – in a different pair of shoes, of course.”

“You... are an angel,” he kissed her hand quietly and as defiantly as her heart screamed in her chest, watching him cut through the crowd like a hot knife through butter towards his redheaded lover, she shushed it with her iron will and watched him with a smile on his face. She knew she had done the right thing. And those sadistic shoes _were_ murder.

~

“ _Through the darkest night_  
comes the brightest light  
And the light that shines  
is deep inside  
It's who you are...”

_Reamonn, Tonight_

 

“I can't believe she let you go...” Ron whispered into his intoxicating mouth, stealing starved, feverish kisses from his blond lover, barely letting any air pass between them, their hands roaming everywhere because they were so bloody out of time, yet they had to do this, they had to... Ron has never been through a longer day in his life and with every passing moment he was growing more hopelessly desperate to connect with whatever tiny piece of Draco he could get his hands on and just live off his touch. He had felt his eyes on him this whole endless day and he would return his glances covertly, whenever he could manage, feeding like a man dying of thirst on the forbidden, yet irresistible exchange of their looks.

When Narcissa had called her son closer to answer some question the bride’s father had regarding their future plans, Ron, sitting between her and lethargic Daphne Greengrass, could have kissed her in gratitude. Had anyone been watching them carefully, Ron was certain there was no way they could have missed they were lovers. The way Draco came to stand behind his chair, his face turned towards his mother, but imperceptibly leaning into him, his fingers casually brushing against the nape of Ron’s neck when he carefully put his hand onto the ornamented back of the chair – it had made Ron shiver and close his eyes to inhale the precious scent like a man possessed. He wasn’t jealous of the pretty little thing he had married because she was his wife, but because she got to sit next to him, not knowing what she had, not knowing Ron was willing to hex away the whole bloody table between them, just to be near him.

Just before Draco left, he pretended to brush a hair off Ron’s attire matter-of-factly, and the redhead had been living off that single desperate touch to the very moment when, as if in a miracle, his blond lover sought him out at the table and spoke with his usual drawl, that was in a stark contrast with his predatory eyes, glowing silver:

“I must regretfully report that I have been abandoned. Astoria’s shoes apparently conspired against my lovely wife and rudely decided to impose bodily harm onto her precious feet, and at the same time it seems my great-grandmother’s head was of a more robust material to be able to hold that 2-pound tiara in place for the entire evening. She has gone to change into something more comfortable. I don’t suppose I could...”

Narcissa’s “ _But of course, darling!_ ” coincided with a noise of Ron’s chair being pushed back with force and the redhead got up at the same time as Draco spoke:

“ Weasley, could you perhaps... ah, yes, thank you. I swear these traditional wedding robes are impossible to get out of!”

And before anyone of them - a confused father of the bride, a fuming blurry-eyed Lucius or an entertained looking Narcissa - could react, they were already gone and the last they heard was Narcissa’s tinker-bell laughter behind them:

“Well, I never...! The youth these days, honestly... No stamina whatsoever! I danced away the entire night of my wedding, well into the wee hours of the morning, remember, Lucius? You hardly let my own father dance with me! Oh, I’m sure they’ll be back shortly, your daughter, Mr. And Mrs. Greengrass, is such a _marvellous_ dancer and I think they make an absolutely _splendid_ couple!”

But Narcissa could have called out their names and demanded they came back and they wouldn’t have cared. As soon as they turned the corner Draco took Ron’s hand without saying a single word and disapparated them. It was a miracle none of them got splinched, as they were already kissing when they reappeared next to each other and for long moments that was all they could do, tasting each other with vicious, branding passion to quench their most urgent need to be with each other once again.

“I can't believe she let you go...” Ron whispered and Draco said nothing, because he was in no state to talk coherently, so he just nodded off-handedly and drove him backwards, into the nearest wall, so he could continue his exploration of that insane mouth that left him so wild and bothered. He couldn't, just couldn't get enough of him, but suddenly he felt him take a sharp gasp against him mouth and their hungry, obsessed kissing came to a momentary halt. He looked into the blue eyes grown wide in surprise at the recognition and he merely smiled leisurely against his skin. He still had it in him to knock the breath out of his fiery lover.

“Draco, that’s...”

“The master bedroom, yes...” the blond wouldn’t be disturbed and sought out his mouth to resume those wet, sloppy kisses he couldn't do without.

“And that’s...”

“My wedding bed, Weasley,” the Slytherin confirmed, his voice breathless from the brutal surge of lust that got him moaning helplessly against that ungodly tongue, playing gently at the edge of every exposed nerve in his body. “God, please... you have no idea... no one should taste this divine, I should have the taste of you bottled... for those fucking endless moments without you... Merlin, man... don't make me wait anymore... even you can't be so cruel... ”

“Why?” the redhead breathed into his ear right before he began painting the sensitive skin underneath it with his tongue, driving the Slytherin absolutely spare with want. “Why here?”

“Where else, then?” the blond whispered feverishly. “Where, Ron?! And with whom, then, _here_ , in my wedding bed when it should only ever be you!? But I can't have you this way and it's fucking killing me, man... it's killing me... and this - to at least make you the first one here - this is the best I can ever hope to get, alright?! I want you, Ronald Weasley, in that bed over there, in _our_ wedding bed, fucking me numb, fucking me stupid, fucking me until I forget that it's not you I've married but another insignificant someone whose life I managed to ruin, fucking me...”

“No,” Ron said quietly and felt the shock of rejection run down his lover's body, before he could finish explaining. “No, I won't fuck you, Draco Malfoy, not this once. This once, my gorgeous silver serpent, I'm going to make love to you...” he looked him deep in the eyes and was startled at the exposed soul looking at him from the bottom of those silver eyes. “I'll make love to you the way you deserve it, my love, good and proper, just the way I promised I would, angel.” He kissed him gently, deeply, working him with thorough, lingering passion, and that slow, sensuous game he started, set fire somewhere deep under Draco's skin, making the blond tremble and whimper under his touch.

“I want to make this matter,” the redhead whispered into his mouth. “I want to make this bed our wedding bed the way it should be. To show you, how you make me feel, how much I worship and adore you... how much I love this... _you_... on me... when you wrap yourself around me and I'm surrounded by all that silk of your perfect skin and that exotic smell of your hair... gods, my love... no man should be so beautiful... you're like a dream... I just want to drink that beauty of yours off your skin... the more of you I have, the more I seem to want you... you're my poison, gorgeous... I want to show you how hopelessly in love you make me when you seek me out with that soft, eager mouth and let me take it... plunder it... damage it with my need for you... I only have to look at that swollen hurt lips afterwards and I'm as hard as a rock, knowing that I've made it so, knowing that you let me...”

“Ron... please...”

There was nothing on Draco's mind but the urgent, burning need to belong to this beautiful, loving man, who knew how to set him on fire, knew how to melt his icy armour under his hot, lingering touch and make him feel his heartbeat go out of control with all that sweet expectation and love, resonating fiercely all over his skin, all the way up in his ears like a battle-drum.

He felt himself transported across the room and he moaned in desperate lust and need when his body finally sunk into the soft mattress of the immaculate wedding bed.

“Ron...”

He said his name like a prayer, in reverence of his redheaded god that tore him apart each and every time and put him back together all better, healed and new and clean. He felt so wonderfully exposed when the long fingers searched through his skin, looking for every tender spot and spoiling it with butterfly touches until it itched with need.

“I'll undress you... slowly.... gorgeous...” the redhead promised him between those mind-blurring kisses Draco was addicted to, while his talented fingers bothered with every little button, with every complicated string in their path to make this longer, as slow, as long and as thorough as possible.

“I want to touch every inch of you,” he whispered into his ear, before the gentle tongue outlined the sensitive shell. “I want to lick the pearls of sweat of your skin, I want to suck...and chew... and worship your tasty sweet nipples until I have you coming... and kiss and bruise and bite that sensitive skin of your inner thigh, just a brush of tongue away from your hard balls, bursting with come... because it makes you scream in the way that it makes my skin prickle.... And I can only do that, because I know you so well, because you let me so close to you...

I want to thank you, beautiful... for choosing me... for making me feel so very special, your chosen one.... and I want to do it my way... in this bed, _our_ bed... with your gorgeous body... naked... vulnerable... all mine. I want my fingers... and my mouth... and my tongue... tell you the story of my heart... how much it cares... how hard you make it beat, nearly too much... it hurts with love, my angel... that's right, love... let me near... let me cover you, mark you for mine, let me crawl inside you and own you... I want to own you so bad, you beautiful blond devil... so, so bad....”

“Please, Ron... now, please....”

The blond was nearly frantic with want, he couldn't imagine having to go through endless moments of sweet torture until he was allowed to scream his name to high-heaven again, he wanted him desperately, now, fucking now was too late, he needed to be filled to the brim with that wonderful cock that rammed into him with such force he felt all of his armours shatter at once – the icy exterior, the good breeding, the cold snark – gone, all gone when he had Ron Weasley between his thighs pounding all that incredible, melting love into him until his heart nearly burst in an overload of feelings he's been forced to keep under wraps all his life.

He needed him, needed him, needed him, needed that beautiful mouth suffocating him while that massive shaft rode him to heaven, he needed the silken red strands dance upon his naked skin like a veil made of light and fire, he needed those sapphire blue eyes on him, making love to his silver orbs, weaving them into one, because this was what Ron Weasley did best – he made him feel as if he was made for him, as if he had been waiting all his life to be completed by him, as if his own life had a purpose and he had found his match at last.

And being bonded was enough to translate his desperate need to Ron; he simply knew what to do.

“Undress me,” he ordered his lover quietly and Draco’s shaking fingers were at their clumsiest ever when they struggled with the complicated attire, cursing quietly, trying to focus at the task ahead while he was being distracted by sweet mouth, stealing butterfly kisses and the strong fingers, exploring his skin, looking for all the vulnerable, sensitive points on his body, and bloody hell, he had too many! But finally every last button was opened and that insanely masculine body he’s been wanking to since he was 14, was revealed. And it was all his for the taking. But just when he was about to - not a chance in hell of waiting a single fucking moment longer! - he noticed the predatory blue eyes, feasting on his own naked body and his breath hitched. He knew what was coming the second before it hit.

Without a single syllable spoken, Ron pushed him down onto his stomach with one adamant motion of a strong, controlling hand, and it was so spot on the very thing that Draco wanted that he whimpered in need and sudden rush of blood to his cock, pressed against the silken sheets. Ron pressed his shoulders down with one hand, tightly against the wonderful scented sheets, already showing the first signs of their debauchery, and whispered a commanding “ _Don't you dare move!_ ”, while he went on to pull up that round pert arse, that had been tempting him the whole day - and exhaled his tension quietly at the cock-spilling sight.

“Bloody hell, gorgeous... You could make me come all over this virgin landscape of your arse, just by watching you offer it to me... the way you tease me with it... this perfectly edible... fuckable arse needs more worship, Malfoy... you have no idea what you do to me...”

He ran his tongue down the crack probingly, all the way to the balls, tense and hard with held-back come and his careless action nearly made Draco lose the game prematurely, but the redhead knew him all too well and the tight fingers, suddenly wrapped around the base of the blond's leaking shaft, somehow managed to hold back the burst of come that seemed imminent.  

“Please...” whimpered Draco, “Please, Ron... inside...”

“Shhh... let me play a little... I've earned it, standing behind you the whole... fucking endless day, imagining the things I could be doing to this lovely arse of yours that would make you lose your cool. You know I'll give it to you in the end... like no one else can... I'll fucking destroy you while you beg me for it... but let me play some first... you're such a beautiful toy... and this boy never used to own anything nice... and now he got this wonderful boy-toy to play with... as much as he wants... anyway he wants... and he _wants_ to... oh, so much it makes him hard just to think of it... everybody envies him his beautiful boy-toy... but no one can have it... no one... cause the boy-toy loves him... doesn't he... doesn't he, love?”

“Oh, yes... love you... so, so much... fuck, Ron...” gasped the blond and desperately tried to think of something that wouldn't make him come on the spot, but his mind was nothing but a blur or “ _want_ ” and “ _need_ ” and “ _now, please, now_ ”... and even if he had come up with something, he would have lost it all to the sweet, loving caresses of those long, calloused fingers, starting to knead his round buns, gently at first, but as the Slytherin began whispering vicious obscenities to make him go harder, all the tender mercy was forgotten and they began leaving their marks all over the marble flesh, because Ron knew his lover, addicted to playing it rough, would have it no other way.

Then those torturous fingers stopped just as suddenly as they started, holding those fleshy, damaged buns wide apart and only hot, moist breath sending shivering anticipation across Draco's needy, empty hole, spreading like wildfire down his body. Ron knew how much he loved it, loved being cornered, loved being invaded, loved being claimed with hard, brutal shoves that satisfied his unspoken, unbearable yearning like nothing else could. And he made him wait for it, because he loved keeping him so very close to the edge, knowing that he had put him there. Finally, for what felt like hours, the soft, melting tongue slowly crawled into the enticing smooth crack against a loud shout of its blond prey and Draco Malfoy was once again reduced to keening like a bitch in heat, desperate to be forced and mastered.

“ _Fuckohfuckmore_ , you wonderful redheaded beast... give me more... I need more... do you hear me... now, please, Ron... fucking now... please, babe... inside...”

“You want to...?” Ron asked him breathless, because something inside of him just couldn't bear a thought of hurting him for real, but a hard, desperate “ _no... just your mouth, for fuck's sake... I want to feel it all... feel it hard_ ” howled between a myriad of broken expletives told him what was Draco Malfoy's ideal declaration of love. So he got him ready with nothing but his sloppy tongue and long probing fingers that had a way of casually brushing against that sacred spot inside of Draco that made him yelp helplessly and beg for more with the same breath.

“Can't take it... can't take any more... please, Ron, _fuckingpleaselove_... I'm yours, I'll do anything, just give it to me, please, you evil... gorgeous... _ohyesbabypleasemore_!!!”

It all came out in one desperate prayer when the swollen cock unexpectedly plunged down his needy channel so hard it knocked the breath out of him along with the last of his coherent thought.

“I love it how you let me do that...” the redhead whispered in his ear. “I love how you let me hurt you and fuck the breath out of you... let me sink in you... so deeply... allow me so close I can break down all the barriers between us and just fuck us into one... look at you, just look at you...”

Still buried deep inside of him, his massive arm lifted his body effortlessly from the sheets, until he held him close tightly to his own body and the blond head sunk onto his shoulder. And with a starved moan Draco Malfoy twisted his arm backwards to let the fingers sink into the silken, red strands and leaned his head sideways, into him, to have his mouth devoured and claimed and damaged like he could only ever hope to get it from his fiery lover.

“How do you even let me near... so close to you... as perfect as you are...?” Ron whispered into his neck, voice rough from raw need. “How is it...” his merciless fingers reached for the rosy buds blooming under his touch and pinched them hard enough to have him shout his name in exquisite pain-gone-pleasure, “... how is it, Malfoy, that you... with this godforsaken... beautiful... debauched body... allow me to paint my name on it with all those wanton, bruising kisses and my rough hands leaving marks... when you should have your marble, unblemished beauty put on display... and have yourself worshipped like a god from afar?”

The large hands brushed down his sides slowly, firmly, leaving goose bumps in their wake, and came to a slow halt on his hipbones, while Ron, buried deep inside of him, rocked into him imperceptibly, building up impossible anticipation for the beautiful blond stretched like a bow in his arms.

“Just look at you... look at yourself...” he whispered in his ear and the Slytherin in his arms obediently lowered his head and moaned softly when he saw one of the big hands crawl towards his swollen, protruding cock, comb through the light pubic hair like a rake and brush against the base of his leaking shaft.

“You’re a fucking melody of beauty... so deadly gorgeous... my boy-toy, _mine_.... want me to play with you, boy-toy?... Want to make this poor boy who never, ever owned something so breath-taking, so precious, scream with joy while playing with his treasure? How would you like to play, love?” he asked him in a hushed voice, licking the back of his neck so softly it gave him the goose-bumps. “Like this? Gently... so you don't break? Or perhaps... like this...”

And then his teeth sunk unexpectedly into the white, unblemished neck, just under the edge of pain and the jerk of Draco's body send his cock through the ring of Ron's fingers, while the other merciless hand pulled him back onto that wonderful shaft from hell, burning him from the inside, brushing against that tender spot made of sparks and heaven and impaled him deeper than he ever thought possible. The ungodly roar that came from the very bottom of Draco's chest made no secret of his preferences.

“Fuck!!! This... _ohfuckingMerlin_ , like this... hard, please, _youredheadedbastard_ , hard!!! You need to... you need to start moving, you need to... please... oh, fuck...”

The blond was out of any coherent thought and barely registered when the redhead whispered:

“Your choice, my prince... remember that in the morning, when you still feel me, absolutely fucking _raw_ on the inside... Now, hold on to something, anything... because I need to deliver... that's right... like this... need to give you what I promised in the morning... and just now... fuck, my love... I need to show you that I own you... that you're mine and no one else's... _fuckingChristandMerlin_ , Draco, those sounds you make drive me wild... you shouldn't... we shouldn't... but I can't stop... can't.... I need to give you what you so crave... the proof of you and I being one...”

The redhead slammed into his blond lover with such vicious force that it nearly made Draco pass out from the rush of electric pleasure through his tense body. But then in came again... and again... and again... and he didn't want to pass out, because this was too fucking exquisite, this flood of ungodly pleasure and high-wired tension only Ron could give him was what he lived for and he wanted more, forever more, more of it, more of him...

The redhead rode him as if he wanted to empty his frustration with this day and the terrible yearning of bonding through his cock, straight into the depths of his lover's body. He no longer held back and the insane pace of his hips, ramming into the blond like he wanted to teach him a lesson, knocked every last breath out of Draco: as much as he wanted to, he couldn't, just couldn't tell him how much he loved this, loved being pounded into a great fucking mash of slick, heavenly, damaged flesh and over-bearing emotion he had no other way of expressing. The only sounds out of his mouth were broken yelps and begging expletives as he held on for dear life onto the massive ornamented head-board of his wedding bed that had surely never witnessed such debauchery. He was beyond words, beyond thoughts, just a giant bundle of raw nerves receiving its absolution, its screaming pleasure by the terrible force behind him, that was Ron Weasley. But he didn't need words. Ron knew.

“I like becoming one with you,” the redhead whispered behind him feverishly, with his one hand forming a tight ring of flesh for the leaking purple shaft pushing through its middle, while one possessive arm held him captive across the chest so that the blond head rested in the crook of his neck with silken hair plastered all over his lover's sweaty torso. “I like joining with you...” the redhead whispered in his ear with moist breath, while the hard arse slammed into him furiously against the litany of his lover's breathless curses, ravaging whatever little was left of Draco Malfoy as the world knew him.

“I like nothing better... and I know what you want, how you want it... oh, so good... so good for me, too... Tenderness does nothing for you, Draco Malfoy... you want your weeping cock milked empty, you want to spread your virgin arse open and have it pumped full of come... have it torn to bits in all that beastly pleasure... such a debauched little boy-toy... rosy nipples standing to attention, trembling cock begging for release.... beautiful... how badly do you want it, boy-toy? You want to be loved with fire and by force, my gorgeous decadent thing, don’t you? Oh, I know how you want it... all the way up to the silver lining of danger... enough pain mixed with pleasure to keep you going to the very edge... when there's only one brutality between you and that fucking explosion of ecstasy so great that stretches and tears you in two and finally the real Draco Malfoy comes roaring out...

I like the way you scream, when you're you... stripped to the core... It's all gone, when you're so close to the edge, isn't it? All your crippling loneliness – gone... the cold, the fear, the fatigue of the world that betrayed your every hope – gone, erased, fucked out of you... all the feelings of not being quite what you were meant to be, not quite good enough, not quite you – gone, all gone and burnt to ashes when my cock drives you against that burning edge of oblivion...

I want to bring you there, my love... so badly.... ride you until you can't anymore and you can't stop either, ride you to the very edge of your beautiful....screaming... surrender... to feel you crack open under me... to release you... let that primal darkness have you... embrace you... it feels like home, doesn't it... melts down all your defences... makes everything perfect and possible and free - and nothing else matters.... any time now, my love... I want to make sure you've had your brains fully and properly fucked out, before I let you have it, my lovely little incubus... cause I can't get enough of you begging for it so sweetly... I can't stop, precious... I can't... this is what you do to me... make me lose myself in you completely... only you... because... _fuckingChristandMerlin_ , you gorgeous little bitch... because I love you, Draco Malfoy...

You need to hear that, you irresistible Slytherin bastard: I love you. I might love you rough, the way I only know how, the way that leaves unhealed scars and breaks shells... and leaves you prickly and shivering with raw feelings out in the open – but I know it's the only way you want to be loved... I love you so wounded with love. Shhh, my love, don't cry... almost there.... I love you, yes I do... I love you my way, your way, every way... to hell and back, my silver-eyed devil... We'd make our own heaven in the darkest pits of hell, my love... together... always together... so close now... I'll let you go, baby, meet me there... at our special place... come and meet me... come, my love... come for me... Draco...!!”

“Ron, I... Ron...!!!... _ohmysweetfuckinggodlove_...”

The blond never noticed when the tears started running down his cheeks, because the impossible tension and the unique feeling of being loved and claimed overwhelmed his senses to a point that he was no longer aware of himself. He had completely melted into the man behind him, seducing him with his hypnotising voice, driving him crazy, protecting him, loving him, breathing all those crazy painful truths into the shell of his ear, marking his neck with those tiny random butterfly bites that made his toes curl, tiny tell-tale actions that let the whole world know how well he knew him, how Draco Malfoy had let Ron Weasley own him, how much Ron Weasley loved owning him...

Every murderous shove of Ron's hips, targeted at that raw bundle of nerves inside of him with hair-raising precision, sent jolts of electricity and monstrous need rippling down his body like a tidal wave and his words... that final flood of quite confessions of love made him so fragile he nearly broke under the terrifying feeling at being laid so open, so very much at mercy of another person... but that person was Ron, his Ron and he told him he loved him, time and time again and Draco could no longer run from himself.

Wrecked, stuttering and so in love he could no longer bear it, he took it all, took everything his beloved redhead had to give, the merciless cock, the gentle words, the crazy heartbeat he could feel pressed so deeply into him, beating out of control, beating for them both – and when he finally broke, broke with a scream and against a sound of his name and his heart's last defence crashing down crackling in his ears, the world mercifully went black and when he came back, he was sobbing. His body trembled and shook from impossible release, he couldn't imagine moving or moving a muscle and yet his disobedient body convulsed with violent sobs, not caring for his permission and the flood of cathartic tears washed away what was left of the old Draco, the boy who was never allowed to feel, to laugh and to love with furious passion his heart was capable of.

Now, in Ron's arms, he could finally let go of the heavy burden of loneliness, self-imposed isolation and terrible reins he so stubbornly tried to put upon his beating, boiling heart. Here, in his arms, he was healed. The emptiness he had always felt right beneath the icy surface was finally filled with all that wonderful, soothing love and he felt whole and claimed and completed... and god, did he belong! He couldn't see him, not the way they ended up on his wrecked wedding bed, but it didn't matter, because he could feel him, the whole of him; the strong arm keeping him close with a calm possessiveness of a rightful owner, the erratic, warm breath on his neck, the drum-like heartbeat resonating inside of his chest, the way he was still buried so deeply inside of his body Draco couldn't ever imagine losing him. He was one with Ron Weasley, in more sense than one, and the thought had made him excruciatingly, drunkenly happy.  

“I love you, Ron Weasley,” he whispered into the empty space in front of him and smiled at how good it sounded, how warm inside it made him feel. Finally the tears were beginning to dry on his face and he felt nothing but drowsy happiness.

“I love you, too, beautiful,” Ron murmured quietly behind him and pressed a sloppy, tired kiss into his neck. “I don't think I can move, though, to show you how much.”

“Move?! Who said anything about moving, you berk... I can barely talk... oh, gods... the very thought of going back...”

“I know... but we have to,” Ron said quietly. It’s not only a matter of showing respect to your mother and wife, you’re a married man now, a proper Malfoy. You’ve got obligations and a reputation to live up to. This thing we’ve got... it is only possible until you keep up your appearances or it will all come crumbling down with much misery to all of us involved. But... if you want to... I’ll still be here in the morning, I’m not due back until tomorrow evening and if you like...”

He kissed him enticingly and Draco purred happily against the soft touch of his lips. He felt him slip out and put all his effort into turning, because if those were going to be their last moments together for this day, he needed to remember him like this, holding him tight, or the rest of the evening would just be unbearable. Everything hurt, every bloody fibre of his body did, but it was a lazy, fatigued sort of pain and the reason behind it made him smile like a fool. There were worse, far worse things of being fucked empty of all ambition for the evening by Ron Weasley and just wanting to close his eyes in his embrace. Far worse things. If only they could stay like this...

“Why do you even have to leave? Just move in with us! There’s room for you, my new home is enormous!”

“You know I can’t, silly... I’ve got kids to look after, I start missing them like crazy after a day or so. And I promised - ”

He stopped abruptly and Draco heart nearly came to a halt in his chest. He knew what was at the end of Ron's unfinished words and somehow, he realized, in this turbulent day, he had completely forgotten about _him_ , the one they did not speak about in this relationship, but whose long shadow loomed above them even in those moments that should belong to them alone. Potter. Him, always him. Even now. And suddenly his mind was flushed with a terrible suspicion and he looked straight into the deep blue eyes of his lover, all of the sudden tinged with despair and asked quietly, clearly:

“What did you promise him, Ron? What did you promise him to make him let you do this? What was it, Ron? _What_?!”

He tried to stay calm, he had god-honest tried, but the fear of losing him blurred whatever little of the rational thought he had left and made him sound livid and haughty, the way he always turned when he needed a wall to hide behind.

But as easy as the redhead was usually rattled, this time he didn't look irritated, nor did he appear intimidated. Just sad, profoundly sad. And that scared Draco more than any outbursts of rage would. He found he could barely breathe staring into those crystal clear eyes, waiting for his answer, waiting to face his greatest demons.

“I promised I would be his one day,” the redhead finally spoke quietly, but there was no regret in his voice, just that deep sadness of a soul, cruelly torn in two. And to Draco it sounded as of someone had put a lid on his coffin and turned the screws.

“How could you?” he asked him, his voice barely working, no sound, just breath coming out. “How could you do that to us?”

“You forget something, Draco Malfoy,” Ron spoke quietly, calmly, as if he had sometimes come to accept that there was not to be any joy unblemished in his life as long as he had torn himself between two men. “You forget I promised myself to him first. And to my wife before that. She had betrayed my trust and I felt justified to break whatever there was between us to be with you. But Harry had done no such thing. _I am cheating on him, with you_ , and not the other way around. He loved me first, from the start and Merlin, there was a time when I was willing to swear that I could never love another. _Always_ , says my ring - even now it does. And then you came and this... _we_ , happened and it had changed me. And not only for the better, my beautiful silver-eyed prince. I had learned how to love beyond anything I ever thought right and possible... and I had learned how to cheat, and lie, and give false hope and hasty promises – all of it, just to be with you.

So you cannot hold it against me, my love. Dear god, I must be the most tied up man in the wizarding world – married, hand-fasted and bonded – and it is so goddamn hard to still be myself after all the claims put upon me, everyone asking for a piece of me, everyone expecting... everything. But this is me, the real me, Draco,” he looked him straight in the eye with those brilliant blue orbs, dark with sadness. “This is the man you fell for, this is the man who loves you. The man who cannot simply throw away a heart of someone, the one person that _always_ stood by me, back then when I was nothing and nobody and even now, when I made a choice that left him broken-hearted. He _helped_ me get groomed for the wedding, Draco, because that's how my Harry is and because if there was any justice in this world, I would have been with him and never look back. I have to live with this every day. That I walked away from him and chose you.

But even Harry Potter needs something to go on, no matter how incredibly resilient he is. When we were hand-fasted, he put his trust in me, his hopes in us, gave me his heart. I cannot simply throw it all away, I cannot break the ties with the one person that once gave my life purpose and to this day makes me a better man. Please understand – _I do not have it in me_ , to let him down completely, to destroy his trust in this world, to ruin the one hope of love he's ever had. I don't have it in me, Draco. I don't. Hate me if you like, let me go, if you cannot accept it, but this is how I am. As long as Harry James Potter loves me, I cannot walk away from him and tell him to forget me because I fell in love with another; not even when it's true. I cannot live in a world where Harry Potter hates me, or thinks me worthless. I cannot.

This is who I am, Draco. I'm not a very good man, and, boy, do I know it! - but even if it breaks me in half, when Harry needs me, I will answer. I will go, without a heart to give him, if I have to, but I will go. I know no other way. Even if I was to chose the other way, I would hate myself. I cannot see how this can end well for any of us, but the best I could do, was to buy us time. He's got a family to raise now, and he would never ever let his family, his kids down, it goes against his very nature, against the little neglected, abused boy that still lives inside of him, craving love and care and more love – so as long as there are children in his home, we've got time. Please, Draco... it's all I could do. Let the future bring what it may, but we've got now. This time, this hour belongs to us, for some time still and please, please don't hate me, because I cannot give you more. I cannot lie to you either. I won't.”

He wouldn't move his eyes away from him and somehow, inexplicably, Draco understood. He fell in love with this man, this one, with a heart so full of love he gave it to everyone he met, the orphaned boy, once, an eternity ago, and the scared young man, all good breeding and cold style, hiding his insecurity and his tender heart, frightened and desperate to love, behind a wall of snark and disdain. It could not have been anyone else to melt his thick, icy armour, it had to be him and he had to love him the way he was, for as long as he could. Live for the moment and pray for a miracle that the future without him never comes.

So he leaned his head on his chest without another world and closed his eyes, listening to his heart-beat, surrendering to the moment. Only after a long while, when the long fingers already crawled into his hair to caress it lovingly, he asked quietly:

“How much, Ron? How much time do we have?”

He felt the chest under him rise with a heavy burden and then he told him:

“My sister is with child again. He won't do a thing before his home is empty of children. I reckon we have twelve years, perhaps more.”

Twelve years. Not forever. But not terribly short either, Draco decided, the practical Slytherin in him finally gaining the upper hand. Twelve. Perhaps more. It will have to do. For now. Plenty of time for things to take a different turn.

In the end they got fifteen. But when the 11-year-old Lily Luna Potter, the last child of Harry Potter, was due to Hogwarts in less than two days, her father was already counting the hours.

 


	53. Dreams about to come true...

_"In the dark_  
_I can feel you in my sleep_  
_In your arms I feel you breathe into me_  
_Forever hold this heart that I will give to you_  
_Forever I will live for you..."_  
  
Skillet, Awake and Alive

 

Harry Potter was whistling. He didn't do that very often – he never learned it properly, such a profane activity would have been very near blasphemy in the respectable Dursley household – thus he didn't do it very well, but today his heart was so full of some unspoken, unspeakable joy, that it was either this – or singing. And Harry didn't think his family and neighbours could stand his singing much, it was worse than his feeble attempts at whistling by a fucking mile! Not that it mattered much, even if some sour soul chose to file an official complaint, none of it mattered in these glorious last days of August, when Harry's deepest heart's desire was to finally come true. Just two more days, just two, less than 48 hours and he would be leaving the Platform 9 and 3/4, holding Ron's hand so proudly as if he had just won the first prize.

Well, at least that was the way he liked to picture it in his head, though he hadn't actually managed to talk to Ron about it. It was going to be something of the sorts anyway, regardless of the details. Them, together, at long last. Too fucking long. Now when he looked back on those 15 years he had spent yearning for his beloved redhead, master-minding his life and manipulating his busy schedule of a Hogwarts' teacher and a father of three children to fit Ron's day-long hours spent in Malfoy's service – he didn't know how he had managed. Sometimes he nearly had to tear himself in two, pretend he was ill, lie about being asked to attend a fictional seminar, drop a class or let Arthur handle the advance Quidditch training Jamie was taking – just to have a chance to be with his addictive lover for a few short hours and get his impossible frustrations out through a session of mind-blowing sex or, very rarely, a night-long of cuddling. And it was never enough.

Ron or himself always had to be somewhere and though the redhead was able to support his kids easily on the pay he was getting from the Malfoys, the bloody Slytherin himself sucked up all of Ron's time and Harry was bitterly aware that if he could have kept him over night, every bloody night, he would have not hesitated to do so. He had certainly attempted it times enough and Harry's bile just burnt like a sack of acid every time he got Ron's apologetic message that he won't be able to make it – though his best mate, so far, has made it home safely on most of the nights.

Still, Harry couldn't help it, he was insanely jealous of every minute Ron spent in Malfoy's company. The bloody man seemed to want more and more of his time, especially when Ron's kids grew older and less dependent on their father, and Harry, whose passion for his fiery best-mate-gone-lover never waned over the years, but seemed to have intensified, found his temper increasingly hard to control. He wasn't proud of moments like this. He had tried, he had god-hones tried not to hold it against Ron that he was earning his living as Malfoy's employee – after all, it was him who supported Ron openly and loudly when the whole hell broke lose in the week following Malfoy's wedding, wasn't he?

The wizarding press had a bloody ball when one shocking news after another hit the public like a set of grenades. First it became public knowledge that Ronald Weasley, one of the so-called Holy Trinity, decided to take up the Malfoys on their offer to protect and guard the newly-wedded Draco Malfoy and his wife against all who were convinced that the Malfoys never repented quite enough after the war, and the rumour was, that Ronald Weasley was doing it for a very generous compensation. Harry was bitterly aware that even the boldest speculations never came close to the accurate number, but nevertheless, he loudly and boldly stood up to all those who whispered – and sometimes shouted - that Ron had sold himself out. He insisted that his best mate has done it in the spirit of the unity of the post-war society and stated, publicly and clearly, that he had himself testified in favour of the Malfoys, who had a change of allegiance, even if a last-minute one. 

But even Harry's interference could not put out the fire of public upheaval once the news of his friends' divorce became public. Pictures of supposedly broken-hearted Hermione flooded the press, the speculations were out of this world – and nearly all had something to do with Ron entering the Malfoys' service. After the first attempt to make sense of things even Hermione gave up and waited it out in silence, since every word she had _actually_ said in the beginning came out terribly manipulated to fit the unfortunate circumstances and all the effort was put into portraying her as a victim of her ex-husband's greed, ambition and fickle character that resulted in the scandalous employment. Ron, on the other hand, got as many threats and written outbursts of distress as he did marriage proposals. Apparently, there was a part of population, mostly made up of teenage witches, that wasn't sorry about the dream-couple's break-up at all.

In this case, Harry couldn't do much, he refused to comment publicly, but he paid special care to make public appearances with both of them, earning himself the headlines of _“The Saviour torn between his once best friends”_ , until Hermione had a brilliant idea of “leaking” the information on the joint lunch she had planned for the three of them at the Three Broomsticks. The photos, that “miraculously” spilled to the press, showed a very relaxed Ron, Hermione and Harry enjoying their food, joking leisurely and quite obviously having a great time in each other's company and after that, the greasy newspaper headlines slowly ran out of fuel.

At least Harry didn't have to fake the friendly spirit. Somehow, with the conclusion of the failed marriage, the true friendship that was underneath their resentments and awkwardness emerged and they were back to being each other's confidants once again. The trust between Ron and Hermione seemed stronger than ever, strangely so, as if they had come to know each other in the least flattering light and still liked what they found enough to remain friends. And Hermione was pretty much the only person who knew about the true nature of their relationship, so Harry felt immensely relaxed in her company. He would inadvertently gawp at Ron all night, then blush profusely when he felt her astute eyes on him, but she would only smile indulgently and Harry had no words to tell her how he loved her for her generous heart. Not to mention that he admired her inner-strength immensely, he didn't think he could have let go the way she had done. But not everyone was as easy to handle as Hermione was.

Ron never cared for what the newspapers had to say about him and what he had done, the whole storm of ink-dripping titles and piles of owl-mail seemed to have left him unaffected, but his family was a whole different cup of defeat. Only Harry knew how deeply hurt was his favourite redhead when his father stopped speaking to him for nearly half a year after he had learned the news of his employment. It took unrelenting Harry's support, Hermione's casual _“oh, you know, I don't see why not - he seems born for the job, Narcissa Malfoy speaks very highly of him, he earns more than three times my wages and he seems quite happy where he's at”_ \- and something Arthur had witnessed at the reception, where he found himself in the same room with his son and Draco Malfoy, to change his mind.

Harry never stopped talking about Ron in front of him, he was determined to bring it home to Weasley Senior that Ron hasn't done anything criminal by accepting the Malfoys' job offer and one day, after Harry's stubborn mention of having spent an evening with Ron and the kids, Arthur asked quietly:

“So... you think he really is happy? He seemed so... I saw them, him and that Malfoy boy at the Ministry reception the other day, and if I didn't know better, I would think they are just mates... That Malfoy boy certainly smiles a lot around my Ronnie and he's nicer than I remember him to be, even to the staff... And Ron... call me stupid but I think he had grown some more and he seemed... relaxed and so... confident. And then he saw me and his face turned miserable and... I don't want to make my children miserable, Merlin knows they've earned all the happiness in the world...” he looked at Harry, looking every bit miserable himself, before he picked up more heatedly:

“But I just didn't want him to get looked down on, you see, I didn't want to see him act as a servant to those horrible people and I didn't want to see him pushed around and humiliated for a handful of galleons! But he didn't seem any of those things... I didn't see the Malfoy boy order him around once, not once, the whole evening! They talked to each other, they laughed a lot and I'm pretty certain he was the one who pointed me out to him.”

At this point Harry clenched his teeth together to hold back an angry remark at the thought of his Ron hanging out with the blond snake, all but wrapped around him, but luckily, Arthur had more to say and he was slowly getting to his point, the words spoken in a quiet voice that sounded nearly defeated:

“When he saw me I'm fairly certain he wanted to talk to me... I saw him mouth _“dad_ ”, even from afar I could... but I just turned away like a bloody coward who can't stand to see his son happy in spite of his gloomy predictions and silly, centuries-old prejudice... and I haven't been able to sleep properly since that night. Do you think... perhaps... he might be ready to see me? You know, talk things over... I miss him,” he said simply and the quiet sadness in his voice was enough to tell Harry how much soul-searching an older man must have done and how much it cost him to finally acknowledge, that the world was, indeed, changing.

“I guarantee you, that if I send him an owl-message now, he would drop everything he's doing and come running,” he said warmly and was rewarded with a relieved smile spreading across the kind face of the oldest Weasley. “He misses you, too,” he added for good measure. “All of you.”

And a shadow crossed Arthur's face as a companion to a worried sigh. Because Arthur Weasley was not the only parent who was not talking to Ron at the time. Molly couldn't have cared less about where her youngest son earned his living, but once Ron and Hermione announced the news of their divorce, she took it badly. Hermione was her perfect daughter-in-law, she gave her a pile of grand-children whom Molly adored, she took care of the family as a sole bread-winner - and how many women did that!? - she was unfathomably smart, compassionate and kind – surely it was no fault of hers! Ron must have done something, then, he must have! Molly simply wasn't equipped to deal with broken homes and mutual agreements to end marriages. In her time, marriage was forever and it was completely beyond her comprehension that two people, who seemed perfect for each other and who apparently completed each other beautifully, should all of the sudden decide that they didn't see each other as life-companions any longer.

In her eyes, if the pot was broken, one fixed it and didn't buy a new one. If they had marital problems, the way every couple got, they should have attempted to overcome them, and not split, for the love of Merlin – who did that?! She didn't know anyone who had done something as unimaginable as that! Surely, people had affairs and strayed away, perhaps for years at the time, but they kept their marriages intact, however miserable! No, something catastrophic must have happened in order for them to part ways – and it had to be Ron. Molly's world made much more sense if there was blame to be placed upon someone for this unfortunate and very public divorce – and she was certain that her youngest son with a penchant for doing things in an unorthodox way and straying from the right path, must have blundered something terribly.

Harry knew that she took his absence from Sunday family lunch just as hard as Ron did, more so because Hermione was always welcome, and the empty chair beside her was a constant reminder that there was something wrong and missing – but once she had poured all her wrath out at her youngest son, screaming at him not to come back until he came to his senses and if he was going to age and die alone, he better have a taste of what alone meant first – it became harder and harder with every passing Sunday lunch to ask him to come back. Harry knew she retired to the kitchen “ _to do dishes_ ” every time and every time they pretended not to hear and notice her sobbing, but she was a proper Prewett and would not be reasoned with. 

Hermione had tried, honestly and without any hidden agenda, but her reasonable explanation of “ _too big a difference in characters_ ”, “ _not enough time spent together_ ” and “ _Ron wanting to stand on his own two feet_ ” did about as much good as dog's barking at the moon. Molly just hugged her, told her that she was incredibly brave and kind-hearted to be looking for excuses for her son's intolerable behaviour, but if only the scoundrel had the courage to tell her what was really behind this... It seemed that Ron's stubborn silence on the matter affected her just as much as his alleged reason for the break-up did and that particular argument had shut Hermione down every bloody time, didn't it? Because for all the truth behind Hermione's words, Molly had a point, there really was another reason for them parting ways. And Harry wouldn't even go there, he wouldn't even attempt to reason with Molly, he was far too anxious that he would open his mouth in defence of Ron and the liberating truth would just pour out, ruining everything beyond repair.

But once Harry had Arthur on his side, things became infinitely easier – after decades spent together Arthur knew the stubborn, kind-hearted woman he had married to the back of her head and if anyone knew how to break down her defences, it was him. That first meeting between father and son was as affectionate as they came and a lot of sniffed _“Bloody hell_ ”s were said along _with the “Have you grown some_ more _?” and “You look good_ , _dad_ ”. Harry never really found out what Arthur said to his wife after the meeting, but when he invited his son along to the traditional Sunday _lunch “it's my house, too,_ you know” and Ron shyly accepted - only to nearly cancel ten times before he mustered the nerves to apparate to the Burrow - he was met with a nearly hysterical Molly, who was squealing and crying in joy, fussing about her youngest as if he had returned back from the dead and blurting out half apologies _“I'm sorry, love, I know I shouldn't have... oh, you know how I get!”_ , half reproaches _“sweet Merlin and Rowena, they've been starving you!_ ” and dishing out hugs as if she would never get another chance.

And Ron was smiling from ear to ear as if Christmas had come early, not even an occasional _“mom, honestly”_   was uttered, as it would normally have been under such an emotional assault and he ate every last bit of everything she had loaded on his plate even though Harry was convinced he must have grown hollow limbs to have it all fit in.

And no one had been happier for Ron when he got his life back than Harry. He _had been_ supportive, he honestly had been, but sometimes he just couldn't help himself – the very thought of Ron so near another man _all the time_ – and that bloody gorgeous Malfoy, of all people! - made his blood boil. Whenever Ron couldn't make it, regardless of how very rarely that was, Harry's mind was poisoned by the images of them... doing stuff together... things he didn't want to think about, pictures he didn't want to see, ideas he couldn't chase out of his mind, because they only made him want to put his arms around Ron's neck and scream like a selfish child _“Mine, goddamit, mine, stay away!”_.

He knew how lame that was, having promised Ron he would never again bring up his employment if Ron kept his word... and Ron did come home nearly every evening and about half the time Harry wasn't even there to meet him, because he was busy with his own family, so he really had nothing to blame him for... but none of it mattered in those lonely hours when the green monster of jealousy hit the worst and Harry fell like a helpless prey into her sharp, heart-shredding claws.

He had nearly lost Ron on one such occasion, very nearly lost him for real. He'd made an appointment with him at The Three Broomsticks, and since he hadn't been able to see him in nearly a week due to their clashing schedules, he was edgy and nervous and craving his lover's company beyond control. Ron was running late and Harry, agitated, impatient and already half-hard, kept drinking way more heavily than he normally did. With every shot he threw back, stinging in his throat, his insides burned more achingly in a mixture of terrible jealousy and hungry need and his clouded brain could no longer stop the unwelcome images of Ron near _him,_ laughing, touching casually, perhaps...

When the redhead finally arrived, a good half an hour late, a casual apology died on his lips at the sight of his best mate. The look in the green eyes was murderous and the raven-haired youth looked drunk and terribly distraught from 10 feet away.

“Harry...” he tried insecurely, but this one time the green-eyed young man, driven half mad with heavy drinking, jealousy and that terrible longing he could never quite satisfy, wouldn't let him continue.

“Oh, so your majesty finally arrived!” he said in a heavy, slurred voice of a drunk man. “I was beginning to wonder when we'll no longer be good enough for your pure-blood highness! Or did your master forget to release you?!”

“Harry... please... you've been drinking...” Ron tried again, his voice quiet and full of desperate pleading. He nervously looked around and quickly cast a privacy charm around their cubicle to avoid a first-class scandal: “Look, I'm sorry...”

“Of course I've been drinking!” Harry shouted with a bold confidence of a heavily intoxicated person, determined he would have his say for once and fuck the consequences: “What else was I supposed to do, waiting for you... _whoring_ yourself to Malfoy?!”

And Ron stopped in his track as if struck by a deadly-blow. The look on his ashen face was such that it nearly pulled Harry right out of his drunken stupor. The blue eyes were instantly filled with genuine hurt, as if he could not believe that a low blow like this would come from the one person he trusted unconditionally; but there was a mixture of shame, guilt and deeply-rooted sadness in those bottomless ponds as well and Harry would never forget the tiny quiver of that beloved soft mouth looking every bit as if his best-mate was trying really hard to suppress some bitter emotion he didn't want to share with anyone. And that one thing, so familiar from their youth whenever Ron was hurt by something or someone and desperately tried to handle it quietly, completely undid Harry.

“I'm sorry,” he said hastily and tried to move towards Ron as fast as his unsure feet allowed it. “God, Ron, I'm sorry...”

But his best mate backed away from him as if he was afraid to get hurt some more if the raven-haired youth came closer.

“What is it with everyone thinking that he treats me badly?!” he said in a voice that could not quite hide a quiver underneath. “Fuck... most of the time he's the only one that treats me right! Everyone else is acting as if I'm involved in some unspeakable crime, as if I'm doing something I should be ashamed of, something dirty and below me... something that's not even appropriate to talk about! You think I don't know what everyone's whispering behind my back?! _“Oh, look over there - that's Ron Weasley, the one who sold himself to the Malfoys... and, mind you, after he lost a brother to the dark forces in the war, of all things! Breaking his mother's heart, that one!”_

By this point his voice was shaking, his eyes were ablaze with hurt and indignation and he was no longer minding the volume:

“Well, fuck you all, thanks very much! No one throws dark, belittling looks my way when I'm with him, no one ever says a harsh word to me, no one ever acts as if they're allowed to clean their shoes on me, just because I took a job! So what if I'm paid well for it? So what if I get to see the world a little while I'm watching Malfoy's back!? What else would I be good at?! It's not like there's good jobs out there galore for a single father of three kids, you know! Fuck you all, you and your arrogance, the lot of you, acting like you're all better than me! You might not ever have to work for money, Harry, but I do! How was my wife supporting me better than this?! Am I supposed to live off charity to make people happy?!”

“I know, Merlin, Ron, please... god, love... please don't... I'm sorry, I'm so sorry... you're right, I'm drunk and I'm fucking pathetic when I drink, you know how I get... It's just... you were late and I kept drinking and picturing you... with him...”

He shut up miserably, before he could let his clumsy tongue do more damage, but Ron was no longer in a state to register what he was trying to say. Harry couldn't remember when he had last seen him so hurt and... damaged and it absolutely killed him to think that it was all his doing. He was too busy being immersed into his selfish jealous fantasies to notice that something was bothering his best-mate and he as sure as hell never thought to ask... Some friend he was! It was obvious at that moment, when it was already too late, that Ron wasn't taking the public scolding too well, not too well at all, but out of some misplaced Weasley pride and stubbornness, he seemed to have been keeping his feelings inside this whole time.

It devastated Harry to realize that the reason why Ron still kept it together all this time and defied the entire world with his choice of employment, was because he at least had him, Harry on his side and green-eyed man knew all too well how much that had meant to his redheaded lover, whose poor self esteem and a feeling of inferiority he always carried around, were always making him question himself and his decisions. He only had to take one look at the ashen-pale face and those clear blue eyes he loved so much, now brilliant with held-back tears of anger and despair, to see the full scale of disaster his careless, jealous outburst had left behind – and his heart clenched most viciously in his chest. He instinctively felt he had hit some invisible barrier with Ron that he should have recognised and tackled most gently – but he had already fucked up royally and there was no way back.

But he had to try, gods, he had to...! The very thought of losing Ron to something as absurd as this, to anything... it felt as if an ice-cold hand took a hold of his heart and just squeezed all the warmth out of it.

“Please, Ron...” he said in a shaky voice, but the words wouldn't come and he cursed every drop of drink he had this evening to have tied up his tongue when he needed it the most. His brain seemed to have frozen on the spot at the very thought of losing Ron and he had nothing but his pleading eyes and his tremulous voice at his disposal to make his redhead see reason, to tell him that he never meant the terrible insult the way it came out and to please, please stay and give him a chance to make things better. 

“Please, love...” he had whispered in the end, when nothing but the absolute truth came out and he tried to reach out to him with his trembling fingers to bring him closer, look into his eyes and beg forgiveness. But Ron was no longer within his reach. Something had broken inside of him and there was an unrecognisable wild emotion in those blue eyes, almost the man Harry had known since the boyhood, disappeared and was replaced by some strange creature, untameable, unreadable and out of control. Harry wished with all his heart that Hermione was here, because she would surely know how to handle this, but he was on his own, his befuddled brain only half working and with a sheer horror he realized he wouldn't be able to keep him.

And indeed, his quiet best-mate merely shook his fiery head at his attempt to pull him closer once more and spoke quietly:

“Not tonight, Harry... much, much later.”

And he had disapparated away, leaving Harry completely frozen in his misery.

It took him a while to get himself together enough to leave, but he was so devastated he forgot where he was headed. He roamed about the night-time London completely absent-minded and nearly got mugged, but he dealt with the pathetic excuses for criminals almost matter-of-factly, not even remembering to obliviate them afterwards. His mind was still empty, frozen in the one thought that he had betrayed Ron horribly and now he was gone. When he finally found his way to Grimmauld place in the morning, arriving there more by instinct than intention, he had barely entered the house when the owls started coming.

First there was a message from Hermione, asking if Ron was with him - and if not, if perhaps Harry knew where he was? Harry knew her well enough to read the worried undertone in her message. She let him know that he never made it home in the morning the way he was supposed to and he had never failed to pick up the kids from Molly before, not when he had a weekend with them scheduled. They were waiting for him, dressed up and ready to go to the fun park with him, but after a few hours of waiting, filled with tears of impatience and anger at their irresponsible father, the anger gave way to worry. That was very much out of character. She knew he had scheduled to have drinks with Harry – did he even show up? Did something happen?

And Harry just sat there with a quill in his trembling hand, not even knowing where to start and how to package the horror that piled up inside him. Ron didn't even go home... he must have been completely besides himself, then, Merlin knows where he was wandering about, he could be in danger, he could be... But he never got to finish this thought. The next owl-post was delivered by a majestic Eagle Owl and if he never knew who owned it, he could have guessed it – even the animal was snotty, much like its owner. And it didn't just drop a scroll on his desk, but something that looked much like... a Howler? A Howler from Malfoy?! Mother of Jesus...

In the next minute the room was filled with the super-loud voice of Draco Malfoy, speaking calmly, but with such cold hard anger underneath that it made every hair on Harry's body rise in defiance.

“ _Potter, you self-absorbed, pompous bastard! If you think for one minute that I'm going to lose Weasley as my valuable companion because of your sickly, obsessive possessiveness and god-complex, you short arrogant prat, you've got another think coming! I don't know what you've said to him, but he showed up here, in the middle of the bloody night, looking like a bloody ghost and woke me - and my wife! - up to tell me that he no longer wishes to work for me, because his Harry – and I assume he means you, you petty little excuse for a wizard! - the Harry he sadly thinks the world of, made him think he would be better off begging on the streets than spending his days in my presence. Now, what he had said made absolutely no sense whatsoever to me, from beginning to the end, but I could see that he was so out of it, I had no choice but to knock him out flat and he's currently resting in his quarters, where his "beloved" Harry, who clearly enjoys hurting him as often as he can, can't reach him._

 _So, Potter... if there's any shred of a decent human being still left in that Saviour arse of yours, you will fix this and you will fix it right now! You may think he's yours to have, to manipulate, to humiliate and to show his proper place, which is only ever at your feet, but I assure you, he's a valuable member of this household and I will do everything in my power to stop him doing something as foolish as following_ _the wishes of a self-centred, jealous snot, who's not worthy to clean his shoes, let alone call himself his friend!_

_I will expect your fire-call here, on this address below, within an hour. Or face the consequences.”_

The Howled exploded afterwards, shredded into a million pieces with just one bigger part with Malfoy's address on floating neatly into Harry's hand - but Harry didn't hear much more than Ron was safe at Malfoy's place. The relief that flooded him was so great, he couldn't care less if the blond git declared an all-out open war against him - and he figured out he deserved pretty much everything that was coming to him after that night from hell anyway. He merely gathered his wits about for long enough to scribble a short note to Hermione that Ron had been located, that he, though delayed unwillingly, was in no danger, and that Harry was going to try to retrieve him and she would get her answers later.

The owl had barely left when he was already shoving his face down the fireplace, reciting the address he was given and in the next moment he was staring from an awkward position into a foreign room. As far as he could see, the place was spacious, decorated in warm earthy tones and that simple, elegant style that must have cost a fortune, but what was the best thing about it – it had Ron in it, sleeping on a large four-poster bed in the corner of the room, looking very pale, but peaceful. But Malfoy was anything but. He was pacing back and front in front of the fire-place, his pretty face frowning and even more pale than usual and he was busy mumbling something unintelligible in front of himself.

“Finally!” he exploded when Harry's face appeared in the ashes and Harry considered himself lucky that he didn't think of throwing one of the big logs that stood by the fire, at him. “Twenty-seven minutes, Potter!” he spat. “It took you twenty-seven minutes to come and respond while your supposed best mate lies here, knocked out in the middle of a snake-pit,” he commented with cold snark. “Had I meant him harm, he would have been dead twenty-seven times over! Some friend... I've had more responsive hearth-rugs than that!”

“Cut the bullshit, Malfoy!” Harry said curtly, grateful Malfoy couldn't see how badly his hands were shaking from all the piled-up tension and instant relief at the sight of Ron. He didn't even care what the snake had to say. He just wanted Ron back in his arms safely, craving a chance to say his apology properly and have it accepted. “Wake him up and let me talk to him! I'm not here to hear you bitch about my alleged faults, I'm here for him, so revive him and give us a moment, will you?”

But the blond just gave him his most vicious smirk.

“If only it was that simple. As soon as I mentioned talking to you, he went mental. _“No Harry,”_ he told me. _“Don't call Harry, I can't handle him right now”._ His exact words, Saviour.”

Harry felt all the blood run out of his face and he was glad that Malfoy couldn't see it. So that was it, then...

“Lucky for you, I know Weasley here better than you seem to, Mr. Best Mate. I knew that as soon as he said he didn't wish to see you, there was trouble in paradise, and not a small _“oh, look someone's trying to kill us”_ , the way you're used to, but something that Granger is probably better equipped to deal with than you two emotional toothpick are. What, exactly, did you say to him, you absolute... dork!?”

He stopped his pacing and looked him straight in the eye as if he was trying to perform legilimency on him and Harry noticed that even though his words were as cynical as ever, there was some sort of cold anger hiding underneath those grey eyes as if Malfoy really cared about Ron getting hurt... and Harry realized another thing: he never thought about the Slytherin having any kind of feelings for his best-mate that went above lust and the very thought chilled him to the bone. But the blond didn't leave him any time to read him, as if he knew that he had inadvertently given him a hint that could activate all of Harry's defences – he just waved his hand dismissively after there was no answer and continued dryly:

“No matter... I imagine it was pretty bad. You see, I could have used his... condition to my favour, setting him against you – should I hold such interest at heart – but if there is one thing I know about Ronald Weasley it's that he's absolutely fucking loyal to you, to the bone, and that sooner or later you'd find a way to get under his skin once again and I would risk losing him. And that, my dear Potter, is unfortunately not an option I'm comfortable with. Now, before you jump to any abstract and doubtlessly wrong conclusions, let me point out that I had meant every letter of that message I had owled you: he is a valuable member of this household, my wife is extremely fond of him and she's a picky lady, and my son absolutely adores him – in case you haven't noticed, he's brilliant with kids. Now - where, if you care to explain, am I to go about finding a suitable replacement? Shall I charge you with a task and we'd all be dead in a week, either by negligence or boredom?”

But Harry didn't reply to the provocation. Quietly, but unable to quite hide the tremor in his voice he asked the one question he really wanted an answer to:

“But what about you? What does he mean to you? I get it – your wife likes him and your child adores him – and you... what, Malfoy?... Love him?” he asked barely above the whisper because it was all in those grey eyes, suddenly alight with a silvery glow and he could barely believe what he was seeing and he had to have him say the horrible truth.

A moment longer and he would have gotten his reply. The grey eyes were lit up like torches and Harry had never seen Malfoy look more powerful. He seemed to have grown, there was some sort of hungry longing on his face as if he was dying to tell him something, to speak up and say the words that had the power to hurt Harry beyond repair, but at that moment there was a soft grunt and a rustle coming from the bed and the silvery glow faded and when Harry's eyes darted to the bed to check on Ron only to find him sleeping – once they were back on Malfoy's face, his expression was that of a closed book again.

“What does it matter, Potter?” he said almost softly, but there was a hint of some emotion hidden in his voice that could almost be mistaken for sadness. “He comes here to work every day, spending time with me and my family – and he goes back home to you every night dutifully, because this is where his home is, somewhere near you. What does it matter what I tell you? My heart is of little concern to you - as it should be.”

And as on a cue there came a small _“Harry?”_ from the bed followed by a tired _“What are you doing here?”_ and Harry's heart flew to his throat, Malfoy forgotten and the only thing on his mind was how to make this better, how to get it right this time.

“Oh, for Merlin's sake, Potter, you can't have any significant conversations with your head buried in soot,” Malfoy said in a voice that sounded nearly bored. “Come on over then, the Floo address is Bellevue Estate, I will give you two some privacy and please keep in mind that I'd appreciate it very much if I still had Weasley here as my companion – or you can break the unfortunate news to my son. And for fuck's sake, mind the rug, Astoria will have my head for breakfast if it's burned by ashes.”

Right before he pulled out of the fireplace, Harry heard Ron's confused _“Draco?”_ and and uncommonly gentle _“Shh... not now, rest... we'll talk later. Potter will be with you shortly."_

When he stumbled into the room he had seen before from the fireplace, Malfoy was nowhere to be seen and Ron was already sitting in his bed. With his bare feet on the polished hardwood floor, still wearing the clothes he had on the night before, he looked a bit lost and a tad beaten, with that fresh-out-of-bed, warm and tousled look that melted Harry into a boneless mess inside and out. His heart ached at the sight of blue eyes on him and the very thought of ever losing this, losing him, seemed unbearable. In spite of Malfoy's warning, Harry didn't mind the expensive rug and the soot he was leaving in his trail, when he headed directly for the bed. He sunk on his knees in front of him, and put his head into Ron's lap, without ever saying a word.

And when a short moment later those familiar long, warm fingers sunk into his hair and trod through it gently, he knew he was forgiven... and he was instantly flooded with the most god-awful mixture of immense relief and terrible shame. He only had to show up and he was forgiven and he knew he could never find words big enough to tell Ron how much he loved him for taking him back.

“I'm sorry,” he stuttered and didn't know what else to say. “I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry... I never should have... you're trying so hard and you always come back to me no matter what... and even if... oh, I deserve the worst, I know I do, but... please, don't leave me. I couldn't bear it. Please, Ron... you're my world and I went through hell and back last night, thinking that I must have lost you... Please believe me, I never meant those words, not even when I had said them... I was jealous and drunk... and lonely and horny... and you were late and I kept drinking, thinking that perhaps this time, you wouldn't make it... and... I kept seeing you... with him... he loves you, he as good as said it...”

“Shhhh...” the redhead said gently, pulling him up into his lap and holding him tight. “ 's alright now. I've had a long day and I guess it all piled up... I guess I wasn't expecting to find you upset, I let it get to me more than I should have... I knew you didn't mean it, I knew it, but I couldn't help myself, I was just... it hit too hard, on the very spot that's been hurting for a while and I never really managed to mention it to you before.... We're always so bloody out of time... Let's forget last night, alright? Mother of bloody god – his good intentions aside, Malfoy's hexes are still as vicious as ever – my head hurts like there's a drunken hippogriff locked inside, learning how to step-dance, and I have a feeling there's somewhere I'd have to be, but I can't even remember what day it is...”

“It's alright, love... it's going to be alright. Let me handle this, I'll make it all OK. I promise. I owe you that much. I'll take you to Grimmauld's for the weekend, tell everyone you're coming down with something and you can rest some. Please let me do that for you. I'll come and stay with you. We don't have to do anything, I just want to be there and take care of you, be with you after the scare you gave me last night. Will you let me?”

Harry kissed him, gently, chastely on the cheek and his heartbeat went over the roof when he felt his lover lean into him and nod tiredly: “Alright then... I suppose I could use some rest.”

And then there was a knock at the door that barely gave Harry the time to get up from Ron's lap hastily and went to stand by him awkwardly, suddenly painfully aware that he was way out of his home-ground. Draco Malfoy entered, holding by the hand a small blond boy that looked about the same age that Harry's second-born, Albus. His big, intriguing grey-blue eyes dominated the familiar pointy face, but the little one's expression was anything but snotty and sour, like his father had once been. His face literally lit up when he saw Ron and - most shockingly ignoring the manners! - he tore himself from his father's hand and flew towards the redhead. The force of the impact was such, that Ron nearly swayed back and forth before his composure returned and he picked up the little blond into his lap smiling and let himself be hugged fiercely.

Harry's jaw just hit the floor. _This_ ... _was Malfoy junior?!_ Clearly his father wasn't kidding when he had mentioned that the little boy adored Ron.

“Uncle Wonnie!” the blondie exclaimed happily and went on chattering something in a gibberish Harry was well aware no one else stood a chance of understanding unless they were familiar with the child.

“He insisted,” his father said calmly, but not at all apologetically. “You know how he gets. He wouldn't have slept a single minute until he got to see you. Astoria might have let it slip that you were still around – you know how he mourns every time you leave – and the whole hell broke lose after that. God forbid you were no longer here – I swear he dragged me behind the whole time, trying to get here on time. One of these days you're going to have to spill, Weasley, what it was that you charmed my son with, so that he hardly mentions anyone else these days. It's always _“Uncle Wonnie this, Uncle Wonnie that”_ – I'm telling you, it's running my father absolutely spare with irritation.”

Harry knew as sure as the Earth was round that Astoria Malfoy had nothing to do with it, Draco Malfoy had brought in the little man to make a point and when Harry saw Ron smiling at the little one tiredly and trying to keep up with the speed of his chatter with occasional _“Did he now?” “You don't say!”, “Brilliant!”_ \- he knew what the message was. Ron's territory. Not his. Everything, from this bed, that seemed to be made to fit Ron's above-average height, to this child that clearly treasured Ron as his best friend. And Malfoy. Standing by the side, perfectly composed, staring at his child wrapped around the neck of his once greatest enemy, looking absolutely enchanted. He probably didn't even know it. But Harry finally knew what he was looking at.

This, here, was a man in love and he spent nearly his every waking minute in the company of the man he had fallen for. And there was no longer anything Harry could have done about it. Malfoy had played it perfectly. He hadn't taken advantage of Ron's disappointment and anger as a more short-sighted man merely lusting after his best mate would have; he had done the right thing, stopped Ron from running into the night all crazy, called Harry, made Harry owe him a favour, made him look petty, self-centred and overly-possessive in comparison and even though Harry now knew the truth, he could no longer point a finger at Malfoy and tell Ron: this man wants you for himself. Not just Ron, anyone would have been justified to look at him funny, telling him he had lost all of his marbles. It was Harry who had thrown a jealous fit, Malfoy didn't have to. He played for the end winnings. He played for Ron's heart.

And Harry suddenly felt a cold chill down his spine, thinking how close he had come this night to losing the game spectacularly. He needed to get out of here soon and take Ron with him. If only there was a way to keep Ron from returning here! But as he watched Ron being smothered by a small blond boy and loving every minute of it, while the boy's father stood there watching them with a small indulging smile in the corner of his mouth, not doing anything _wrong_ , Harry knew he had shut that door closed for many years to come. He had no more reason to ask Ron to stay away from Malfoy, Malfoy had made sure of that. He did good by him, he was good for him – and Harry wasn't. _Bloody Slytherin._

So now there was nothing left to do for Harry but the obvious.

“Malfoy, that was beyond decent. Thank you, I won't forget that,” he said as kindly as he could muster, but the blond snake just smiled smugly.

“Oh, I know that... you owe me one – and one day I'll have you pay it back. Unsettled score is no good for any of us. We need an equilibrium not to antagonize each other.”

“Indeed,” Harry agreed, though the very thought of what the payback may be, made him queasy. “I should very much like to remove Ron now, if you don't mind. He needs rest, he looks like death-warmed-up.”

“Once again, we agree,” Malfoy smiled in that cold way that never reached his eyes. “It's clearly better that you get out of here as soon as possible, before we make it a habit. I will be expecting Weasley here returned to his position – let's say Tuesday morning, I'll throw in another day of paid leave, I'm feeling generous. Now, give me a minute to call off my son, I should think this would take no less than the biggest portion of ice cream the Fortescue's has to offer, Scorpius finds their range of ice-creams most impressive and I must say that the son's product is no worse than his late father's ever was.”

Harry watched in awe when Draco went to kneel by Ron's feet, just like he did moments ago, and opened his arms widely, calling his son with the calm, soft voice he's never heard him use before:

“Scorpius, dearest, come, papa needs his ice-cream for the day and I believe you promised to take me to Fortescue's – or I shall scream very hard and cry buckets of tears.”

The little boy giggled at the funny imagery of his distinguished father throwing a childish fit and quickly changed one lap for another, but not before he pressed a big wet kiss into Ron's cheek and whispered _“Love you, Uncle Wonnie, get well soon”_ with surprising clarity. When his father lifted him up to carry him away, the little one caught a sight of Harry and his big grey-blue eyes got even bigger in surprise:

“ 'Ally Potta, be't mate!” he exclaimed happily and Harry couldn't help it when he felt his face stretch into a smile aimed right back into the little beaming face. There was only one person who's best mate he was and apparently Ron has been talking about him, even on the job. The way it seemed, minding Malfoy's child was not at all the hardest of daily duties to a redhead, who had practically raised three kids on his own. One could see Ron's influence on the child's relaxed demeanour, there was no way in hell the stiff Slytherin was raising such a sunshine all by himself. If this amiable child ends up as his son's buddy, Harry didn't think he would mind it much.

He heard Ron chuckle as he got out of bed and mumbled:

“Hide your daughter, Harry! This one's a natural-born charmer!”

“But of course,” Malfoy offered with a small smile in the corner of his lips. “Like father, like son.”

“Shuddup, you two pervs... she's one! And she's not dating until she's ready to retire!” Harry mumbled at the scary thought of having a Malfoy as his relative at any one point in his life.

“It's never too early to give away your heart, when you're a Malfoy... or too late,” the blond said quietly and Harry was certain these words were laden with a hidden meaning he was only beginning to understand. But the Slytherin gave him no time to consider. He already took an adamant step towards the exit and only turned towards Ron when he was already standing between the door. Harry never saw his face when he said _“Take care... Weasley. You're expected here on Tuesday”_  , but there was a strange undertone in his voice that made it sound almost gentle and Harry just couldn't get Ron out of that place fast enough.

He wasn't fully restored to his old self until they had made love for the first time after the incident. He was almost frightened to approach him, he had all but promised Ron to leave him alone that weekend, but he found that promise very hard to keep, when he walked into the room, holding a just woken up redhead, who smiled at him from his bed sleepily – and opened the bedcover invitingly. And Harry hadn't been with him for what felt like ages and he had all that pent up frustration and fear and searing love to give, and a heart-wrenching need to find himself claimed and branded with love to collect, and Ron delivered, the way he delivered every bloody time, only more, better and longer than ever before, or at least that's how it felt.

Harry's attempts to be gentle at first led nowhere, as Ron wasn't up to it – but he was up to some abandoned, slurpy, hard kissing that left Harry panting into his mouth like a bitch in heat, _“Missed me, Potter?”“Gods... yeah... you have no idea...no idea at all...”_ ; he was up to some marking with sharp teeth and slick, vicious tongue that drove Harry up the fucking wall when applied to his most tender places as if the redhead wanted to make sure he was paying the price for hurting him in a most addictive mixture of pain and pleasure that had Harry beg for it, beg for more, with whimpers, filthy expletives and no restraints, _“Oh, please, fuck, please, yes, that... there, gorgeous... more... now... Ron...”_ ; he was up to spreading Harry open and making him ready with nothing but his spit and those long fingers that had long ago made a slave out of Harry, _“Need... now, my love... don't make me... yessss!!!”_

And then he was finally inside... buried deep inside of him, his fat, hungry cock stretching him to the point of burning, bringing along that terrible longing only he could fulfil. _“Please...”_ he whimpered, because he was out of words, out of thoughts, he just needed him to move, fucking move already, and when he finally did, that mean cock brushed tightly against that godforsaken itching spot, slammed into Harry and filled him up to the brim, making him scream. The insane pleasure flooded Harry to the last fibre of his body and he roared as it nearly spilled over; sinking his bony fingers into whatever flesh he could get as he impaled himself onto that thick shaft that drilled through his sanity, over and over again, _“...fuckfuckfuckfuck me, baby, fuck me harder”_ , making their bodies slam together in a perfect heart-stopping symphony of lust and debauchery, the only salvation lying at the bottom of those blue gems, staring at him from the height and he knew his blue-eyed god loved him.

“Ron... so close...” he tried to tell him, but barely anything came out, because he was gasping for air, because the tension was unbearable, but his redheaded devil understood and leaned closer into him, capturing his mouth hungrily and driving his hips into his body brutally, manhandling Harry's cock with his large fist. 

“My Harry... mine....” was all Ron whispered possessively and with a loud wanton yelp Harry was spilling his hot load all over the slick flesh between them, rocking into Ron's tight hand long past he had lost himself to darkness. As he lay in Ron's arms unable to move a muscle, it felt as if his violent release had finally cleaned him of the terrible guilt and anxiety he couldn't shake ever since he had over-stepped Ron's boundaries. He was boneless, shattered and completely happy, as if Ron's embrace was his cocoon of all things good and right and there was nothing on his mind other than to stay right here, just the way he was, with that large muscled body covering him, with that familiar scent of sweat and Ron-musk surrounding him like a warm, comforting blanket and he didn't want to imagine there's any kind of different reality waiting for him outside.

He needed his Ron and he knew he would do anything, just about any fucking thing to keep him while he couldn't have him. Yet. But also his waiting had come to an end and when he would put Lily Luna onto that train in less than two days, Ron would be his to love and to take home if he wished to. Harry couldn't remember a time when he had wanted anything else, anything more for himself. Ron promised, there was nothing that could stand in their way. Harry was willing to face all the consequences of his actions – and there would be many, some of them grave – but with Ron by his side, it would be a piece of cake to deal with any of them, with them all. _Bring it on_ , he thought stubbornly.

He had paid his dues to the society, he had given the wizarding community three lovely children; he had been teaching 15 generations of Hogwarts' students all he knew about the defence against the  dark arts; he had helped rebuild Hogwarts, which was now restored to its old glory with many discrete improvements from the modern world built into the ancient looking walls; he had been a near-perfect husband, an upstanding member of society and now it was his time. He had paid dearly for his happiness and he was way overdue to have some. And in his book, happiness had a name: Ronald Weasley. He wanted to be with Ron more than anything, no hiding, no more cheating, no shame – and he was willing to put everything he had ever achieved in his life on the line to have it so. Just two more days...

His careless whistling was interrupted by a knock on the door and because they lived in a part of town with a mixed population of Wizards and Muggles alike, he assumed it was one of the Muggle neighbours, roaming door to door with this petition or the other, as they sometimes would. He opened the door with a relaxed, cheerful expression on his face – and felt his heart drop. Not a Muggle neighbour at all... but Draco Malfoy, in person. Looking very pale and very determined. And thunderstruck Harry thought he knew just what this was all about. 


	54. He's worth all the hurt...

_“So, can you see_

_I believe by the blood that I seep_

_That it's worth all the hurt and the tears_

_And the tears that I desperately weep..._

_Can you see_

_I believe and no longer grieve_

_And it's worth all the hurt and the fears_

_And the fears that I desperately keep...”_

Poisonblack, The State

 

“Potter... we need to talk,” were the first words out of the Slytherin's mouth and in spite of the adamant tone, there was an almost apologetic edge to his demeanour, as if he was aware how very unorthodox his appearance at Harry's doorstep was. “Sadly, I didn't have your Floo address, or I would have announced myself differently,” he explained off-handedly and Harry knew that in his eyes that counted as much as an apology for intrusion from someone else. The bastard even had the audacity to smirk at him when he continued: “Not to mention that after all these years your place is still guarded like Azkaban, so it was impossible for me to apparate – nor would it be appropriate... but I'm afraid this cannot wait and this is why I'm here by more... conventional means.”

And Harry just wanted to crash the door into the solemn, narrow face, that barely aged in all this time; he wanted to put a wand to his head and obliviate him and tell him to never come back, but this was Malfoy and the strange determination, almost at the edge of despair somewhere at the bottom of the grey eyes, made Harry think he came prepared, so there was precious little what he could do. Malfoy could raise fuck-knows-what hell if he was denied his request to talk to the Saviour and Harry knew he once again had him cornered. He never expected the bastard to come to his door. Fucking Slytherin, still slimy, unscrupulous and resourceful after all these years.

So Harry did the only thing there was still left for him to do and he quietly moved away from the door, allowing access to the slim blond to enter. The blond menace may think he has the upper hand, but this time, things were different; this time, they were on Harry's territory and Harry wasn't about to pay too high a price for something he had done nearly a decade ago.

But fair was fair and because Malfoy had let him into his house so open-handedly all those years back, Harry wasn't about to deal with him in the hallway, as if he was ashamed of his comfortable, but not glamorous home. He didn't bother motioning Malfoy to follow, so there would be no chance of a false indication that the Slytherin was welcome, but he merely turned around and headed towards his cosy and meticulously kept working room, that had the benefit of a private fireplace with a Floo as well as strong privacy charms and alerts. Should any of Harry's family members return from Diagon Alley unexpectedly early, they would be alerted.

He silently offered Malfoy a comfortable arm-chair he had ready for the visitors and sat behind his desk, making a statement of putting yet another barrier between them and keeping things as professional and impersonal as possible. If Malfoy came to call in a favour, Harry wasn't going to make it easy.

But the blond seemed entirely unaffected. He briefly took in the surroundings, his eyes resting a tad longer only on the wizarding photograph of Harry and Ron, taken on a Quidditch pitch, hugging each other across the shoulders, looking tired and dirty, but grinning from ear to ear. That's right, Harry thought defiantly, best mates and more, as you're about to find out. But Malfoy mainly commented with a dry _“Nice little piece of property you've got here, Potter”_ and when Harry merely nodded in acknowledgement, the time for courtesies was over; the blond was clearly not here to profess his manners.

“I'm sure you've got at least an idea what this is about,” he started in his cold, restrained voice, that Harry was certain he had reserved for him alone as he had heard him talk to people before and he never sounded quite like that.

“But let me refresh your memory just in case,” the Slytherin continued in a business-like manner. “A decade ago I was woken up in the middle of the night by your best mate Ronald, who to this day remains an employee of the Malfoy family. He was off duty at the time and clearly distraught, blabbing rather incoherently that he no longer wished to work for me as _“_ _his Harry_ ” thought it demeaning and would accuse him of certain... unbecoming activities that by far and large surpassed those of a personal guard, the position he had been engaged to. In short,” Malfoy moved forward in his chair to look Harry straight in the eye, “you apparently told him he was “ _whoring_ ” himself to me and Ron wasn't having any of it, not even from you.”

Harry went a shade paler, for more than just one reason. Ron never told him he had repeated his exact word to Malfoy, but given the state he was in, Harry doubted he could remember what he had or hadn't said. Harry should just have assumed Malfoy knew, he should have known better. _And since when was the bloody snake calling Ron by his given name?!_

“Now, I'm sure you remember I did the right thing back then,” Malfoy continued almost matter-of-factly. “I kept him at my place - though, granted, my methods were rather crude, but you see, I had to improvise - I called you and I let you take care of him. If I had meant bad for you or for him, this could have ended very differently. I assure you if it was my father, who had intercepted him, it would have. But I did the decent thing, even you had acknowledged it, and now I'm afraid I have to ask you to return the favour and do the right thing yourself.”

Malfoy had paused a little as if he was trying to organize his thoughts into saying this right, but Harry finally lost his patience. Crossing his arms on his chest rather forcefully to mask his distress, he looked into the grey eyes defiantly and barely managed to keep back the open hostility in his voice when he all but barked:

“Well?! Say what you came here to say, then! What is it that you want? I'm afraid my first-born is no longer mine to give away!”

But his sarcasm did nothing but brought a cold smile onto the Slytherin's face.

“No, I'm happy to report it's nothing quite as melodramatic as that, Potter. We might seem old-fashioned to you, seeing that you live as half a Muggle, but I assure you that the old practices have long ago been discontinued. No, I'm merely here to ask you to leave Ron where he's at: in my service.”

As Harry's jaw unhinged, not quite able to process quickly how on Merlin's flat Earth did Malfoy know what he was about to do, he saw the grey eyes turn as hard as granite:

“If I never knew there was anything between you that went beyond the boundaries of mere friendship, I would have gotten my clue that night. No one's quite that upset when a mere friend tells them they're whoring themselves – but he was absolutely fucking out of it. But as things stand, I was... informed of the... particular nature of your relationship with Ron ages before the night in question. To make the long story short, I saw you. With my own eyes. In a way that left no doubt as to what was going on,” he said smoothly and Harry felt as if his air supply was cut short. A secret like that in the wrong hands, at the wrong time... 

“And there's another thing,” the blond continued calmly as if not really bothered by Harry's distress. “Ron knows, he's always known. He didn't tell you that I knew about you two, because he knew I couldn't go anywhere with this information. You see, I've... obtained it in a way that it made it entirely impossible for me to blackmail any of you with the knowledge.”

Another short, dark moment of silence as if Malfoy was considering if he should really let Harry Potter, one of the mightiest wizards alive, in on a secret he had been guarding for so long. But then he exhaled slowly as if he had decided to throw it all to the dogs and spoke quietly:

“That first time, by the Forbidden Forest – I was there, Potter - and I'm afraid Ron caught me in the act.”

Harry seemed to have lost all ability to speak. He... Malfoy was there. He had witnessed his most private moments, the moments Harry cherished above all, and Ron knew and for some reason, he never spoke...

“Don't judge him too harshly,” the Slytherin's voice interfered with his scattered thoughts and for someone who could be gloating, it was uncommonly calm, almost soothing. “He probably thought it would smear what must be one of your most priceless memories... and he could not have removed me without ruining the moment. And lastly, I believe he had another, far more... practical reason to keep me there. You see, Potter, this is where you being raised like a Muggle comes into play,” he said with another small, familiar smirk that got Harry's blood boiling.

“You simply don't know our traditions well enough to know the rules of certain magical procedures. The one I have in mind at the moment, is your hand-fasting. I bet you never knew that there has to be a third person present as a witness if the magical bond is to be established – or am I mistaken? I think not. But lucky for you, you had fallen for a proper pure-blood and Ron knew. He knew and what's more - I think he only decided to go through with it _once_ he figured out I was present. Your best mate's chess-master brain is all about strategy and his was once again formidable: he found out I was there, to this day I'm not sure how, he decided to improvise and make the best of it by going through with a procedure he would hardly ever get a better chance to complete – and with this he let me know he knew I was there and that I was cornered. What would you have done, had you found out I was there, honestly? Would you have gone through with it, Potter?”

Malfoy looked at him almost pensively as if he was trying to read him and then continued adamantly:

“I think not. I think it is more probable that you would try to harm me – which would be understandable, considering that it _was_ rather obvious that my intentions were less than honourable at the time - but you would not have used me, the way Ron did, brilliantly so, if I say so myself. Your redheaded friend is quite unscrupulous when he wants something and you, Potter, were always his number one priority.”

Harry wasn't beyond admitting that he might be imagining things in this mad, surreal morning, but for a moment there it seemed to him as if the blond's voice turned uncommonly bitter. And as odd and uncalled for as his statement was, it served as a strange form of consolation to Harry, like a soothing cold compress on a searing burn, and if it was anyone else but Malfoy, it would have made Harry grateful for the small mercy. But because this _was_ Malfoy, it merely made Harry wonder why he had said it and where did the strange bitterness come from.

He tried to read his feelings, but the Slytherin's face might as well have been made from marble: his facade didn't crack, not once, and he wasn't finished yet:

“So there I was, in my hiding place, forced to watch you and your best mate finally profess your feelings to one another. _“Yours, always”_ \- that's what your ring says, doesn't it? You see, Potter, I know. I was your unwilling witness, I was there,” he continued, and as much as he attempted to sound cold, almost as if he had forced himself to talk about that tender, fateful day that changed all their lives, with as much formality as he could muster, there was undeniable, inexplicable bitter sadness seeping into his voice now.

“And it wasn't until you left to look for a place to spend your first night together, that he let me out of my hiding and... dealt with me. Your lover, Potter, can be cruel,” he said unexpectedly softly as if some vicious, rebellious memory was too strong to be kept entirely under his cold shell. “But what does it matter after all these years? Let it suffice to say that his words and... actions were persuasive enough to make me keep your secret until this day.”

The silence this time was poignant, almost as if there was some unspoken regret in the air, and Harry was nearly startled when Malfoy picked up after a while, his voice back to that superficial, measured flow, appropriate for salon conversation and small-talk:

“But over time this... experience had quite unexpected consequences for both of us: it created quite a unique bond between us. Really – have you never considered why Ron came to me when he was the most upset about your remark and not to any other person from a rather large circle of his family and friends?”

Malfoy looked at him inquisitively as if he was trying to determine if Harry had _any_ idea, but he clearly got his answer from the puzzled expression on Harry's face and he proceeded without waiting for his actual reply:

“Well, I suppose if you _did_ think about it, you probably interpreted it as if he wanted to give me his notice, but I happen to think the truth is different: there was no way he could have said something wrong in my presence, revealing your secret relationship, because I already knew. He could speak freely to me, he could have said anything that was on his mind and it wouldn't have mattered one way or the other,” the blond shrugged as if he attempted to sound indifferent, but then leaned forward once again as if he was finally getting to his point and looked Harry straight in the eye:

“The fact remains that you've been Ron Weasley's lover since you were both 21 and you never stopped hoping that one day, he'll be your chosen one, not only in the privacy of your bed, but in front of the whole world, no matter how unorthodox that is in our community. Which brings me here...”

As if rusted, the cogs in Harry's head were just slowly beginning to turn to process what the blond was saying: Malfoy knew about them and he never spoke... how on Earth had Ron ever forced him to do that?! Cruelly even, if the snake was to be believed! And Ron... he thought he knew his best-mate of over 25 years – and yet he couldn't even begin to fathom what lead his actions! To decide to deal with Malfoy on his own, to use him and to force him into silence with god-know what means, to keep such an important secret from him, Harry, - god Almighty, all of it! And that unique camaraderie between the redhead and Malfoy everyone was wondering about, which was making Harry incredibly edgy, and murderously jealous and... his brain hurt. It literally hurt, with his head so full with mingling, buzzing thoughts he didn't know which one to go with to start making sense of things, but Malfoy beat him to it, and offered a cue of his own to keep the conversation going:

“You must be wondering how I knew that this is the moment you were going to pick to try and make your move on Ron? Well, it's quite simple, really... I know you to be a family man, Potter. Up to a point even, that you sacrificed your career as well as your life-long yearning for your best-mate to have a family and you ended up married to his sister instead, which, in my opinion, was as clever as it was foolish. You've kept Ron close, when life could have brought you apart, but Ginevra Weasley is no one's fool – I think the pretty lady has you figured out and I think once the little ones are out of the nest, all of them, this is one marriage that is not going to hold. Not that you care any longer, she had served her purpose, isn’t that right, Potter? So you see – I knew this was the moment.

Your daughter – Lily Luna, is it? - is leaving for Hogwarts, or so I'm told by my enthusiastic son who seems to be a proper fan of your family – and at least one of its members in particular – and I knew it was now or never. Ron's been free for years, ever since that disastrous overly-publicized divorce of his – and now you will be. Everyone knows that once the fledglings are out of their nest, it's never quite the same – they may come back for certain time-periods and occasions, but you let children go and what you get back are practically adults. I'm headed that way myself. However, I'm no quite comfortable with the idea of losing Ron's service, not comfortable with it at all, actually.”

Another little pause and Harry was getting used to them preceding something Malfoy wanted to make a point of.

“I want to keep him,” he said adamantly and didn't even bother masking the predatory look in those grey eyes.

“Why?” Harry finally got his voice back and his words all but exploded out of him. “Why do you want to keep him around? It's not like you still need him much, you know! All those years after the war – it made sense and as little as we talk about his job, Ron has mentioned an attempt or two at your life. But now, Malfoy – it's been nearly 20 years since the blasted war, or it will be, next year, and I should think if there's any enemies you still had, they would have been out in the clear already. Your wife is a proper philanthropist, there's hardly a more popular witch in England, and your son is starting his fourth year at Hogwarts this year, which means he's at the safest place in the country for ten months out of twelve. So – the fact remains that you don't need Ron – but you want him. Why is that, Malfoy, huh?!”

“I don't owe you an explanation,” the blond said coldly, though now, when he was being challenged so bluntly, there was a strange pink tinge to his cheeks and his eyes took on that silver, feral glow Harry remembered from that strange morning at his estate. “I simply came here to collect a favour and I believe it's a small one. Ron and I are a good team, he likes his job, he makes good money, he gets to see the world some and he's much safer than in that Auror business you had planned for yourselves. What? You thought I didn't know?” the Slytherin smirked viciously at Harry's flabbergasted face.

“I know more about you than I care to. And no, not from Ron, he knows better than to bore me to death by trying to discuss you; it's my son, Scorpius, and his terrible obsession with your family. So, you see, I know you... and I know about you. I know you want to take him away from me and I'm here to remind you of another thing you had said as a part of your vow to him,” the blond said quietly and slowly moved forward to look straight into the green eyes, looking every bit as if he was threatening him and every hair on Harry's neck prickled.

“You promised to dedicate your life to make him happy. And he's... happy. Ron is happy in my employment and I'm only asking you to keep it that way.”

“Malfoy, you do not have a selfless bone in your body, you bastard!” Harry's lividness finally exploded out of him in a hiss that would make Nagini proud and his frustrated, magnificent magic made the furniture in the room rattle. “You don't care about anyone's happiness but your own, so kindly stop with your sorry attempts to throw sand in my eyes! You will tell me _now_ , what this is all about, what is in it for you, or I swear I'm taking Ron to a trip around the world the second Hogwarts Express turns the corner, and you won't see him again for a very, _very_ long time, so help me god! I have my ways, you _know_ I have my ways, so spill it – or let it go and consider us even!”

Malfoy was as pale as a gravestone now, but his eyes now shone with a full-on silver glow Harry had never quite seen before in its full glory. Still, when he spoke, his voice was quiet, but so deadly calm as if it was hiding all kinds of hidden threats and perils underneath and Harry had barely managed to keep back a shiver:

“If I... spill it, as you so elegantly worded it, will you at least reconsider my request? I want something for something this time, Potter, not just empty promises of returned favours you are clearly unwilling to keep. If I tell you, what this is all about – will you take this under serious consideration and not just give me a hasty answer your temper provides you with? If you agree to my terms, I will give you the truth, as much of it as matters to you, and I will come to collect your answer to the Platform 9 and ¾ in two days’ time. But I need your promise.”

The silver eyes were on him, unmoving, unrelenting, and Harry felt every bit as if the viper was about to strike. But he could no longer back out, he was going crazy with all the hinted, half-spoken insinuations; he needed the truth and he needed to have it delivered straight from Malfoy’s mouth. He could only hope that he was ready to take what he had to say. So he finally nodded curtly, spoke a nearly numb “ _Promise_ ” and felt as if he had doomed himself with that simple word. The blond exhaled slowly as if what he was about to say lay somewhat heavy on his chest.

“As of recently, it came to my attention that my son holds an interest, that could not be described with any other word but “romantic”, towards one of your sons. And no, it isn't Albus, as much as this may shock you. Even though your “Albie” and my “Scorp” are all but stitched to each other ever since that first day on the Hogwarts Express – you know, the usual, dorm mates, best friends, confidants, inseparable - it is not your black-haired carbon-copy that had caught my son's fancy. It is the other one. The Quidditch prodigy. James. The redhead one. And that, my darling Potter, seems to be my family's curse.”

He paused a little and Harry nearly felt sick to his stomach. He knew what was coming, he had asked for it himself and he could no longer stop it.

“According to some accidental gossip I over-heard, my father was once quite smitten by a certain red-haired pure-blooded beauty by the name of Molly Prewett. When another redhead beat him to her, he redirected much of his passion onto him, sadly, in a form of hatred. For years my father was unhealthily obsessed with hating Arthur Weasley and he could spit venom for hours on all his faults and wrong-doings even now. It seems that even my teenage mother was not immune to... one redhead in particular, as I've been informed. A proper family curse, Potter. And I...”

He paused shortly as if he knew that he was burning all the bridges with his next words, but then he continued quietly, simply, as there was nothing else left for him:

“I have not been unaffected myself.”

And Harry's world seemed to have stopped dead on its axis. A recognition at last. After long years, his suspicions finally got their unwelcome confirmation, but somehow his heart felt no lighter and his head no clearer and what he got instead, was a surge of a massive panic attack. He pressed the sweaty palms of his hands together to stop them from shaking and wished with all his heart he didn't ask. Perhaps there was still a chance he was reading Malfoy's words wrong, this had to be some sort of terrible misunderstanding, his words... they had to be about something else...

He felt the horror spread across his body in the form of sickness and his emotions must have translated to his face as the blond just said there, watching him quietly as if he wanted to give him a moment to recuperate... or perhaps a moment for the whole awful truth Harry no longer wanted to sink in. When Malfoy spoke next, he no longer attempted to conceal the quiet bitterness in his voice:

“Imagine a room full of posters of your handsome son that my silly child keeps – and I think it's still safe to say that I, of all the Malfoys in existence, have been hit the worst.”

“You've got to be joking,” Harry tried weakly. “You're not really trying to tell me that you... and Ron...”

He couldn't even say it. Somehow saying it would be as good as acknowledging it and this... it couldn't be true. Malfoy had always hated Ron, if there's anything he felt for him... it couldn't be real, not proper feelings like Harry's. Lust... he could live with lust, he could imagine the lean Slytherin somehow attracted to Ron's masculinity, but this... true feelings... it couldn't be. He couldn't be so blind for so long. It had to be a lie. It had to.

“You're lying,” he said in a shaky voice, and then: “Shut up.”

It came out almost pleadingly. But it came much too late; the snake had sunk its fangs in and the Slytherin wasn't letting go. The words flushed out of him so suddenly as if he was dying to say them at long last; as if he had to tell this man, who stood between him and his happiness for twenty odd years, where he put his heart.

“You asked it of me, so you will hear me out now,” he said with quiet determination and looked his adversary straight in the legendary green eyes as if he wanted to give him access to his innermost thoughts:

“You know all too well I'm not lying. I've been in love with Ron Weasley since I was fourteen. Fourteen, Potter,” he said softly and no longer attempted to disguise the longing in his voice. “Since that kiss I know he told you about. That rebellious, childish kiss, meant to shut me up... I've never felt anything quite so magical. You know how he kisses... you know it. He spellbound me completely, god, you have no idea... I’ve never been kissed before, no one had dared... and then this... I’ve never felt anything softer and sweeter, asking and giving all in one; gods, even now... after all these years I still carry it with me. He drank the innocence right out of my lips and broke me, ruined me for everyone else and I let him put his claim on me... and god, did it fuck me up!” he gave a small, sad smile as if he was talking of something he couldn't help but to love, even though it was destroying him.  

“It fucked me up for years... and for good! To this day I don't know how I made it back to the dorm that day and then I just lay there, melted to the core and completely in pieces. There was never anyone else for me after that day; I was never free of it again; of that terrible yearning he gave me unaware, of that heartfelt ache to feel that undoing warmth, to connect with someone deeply, genuinely, by just a sweet, silken touch of mouth, to own and to be owned by someone so wonderfully simple and magnificent.”

He looked Harry straight in the face as he said those words as if he knew the raven-haired man would understand... and Harry did and his heart screamed bloody murder, helpless and unheard, beating like a battle-drum in panic and anxiety inside his chest. The blond might as well be spelling out his own feelings for Ron and just to think that he had left this undeniable beautiful man so close to Ron for years... His hands contracted into fists under the table and Harry knew if Malfoy could see them, he would probably go for his wand. The furniture in the room was vibrating with the force of Harry’s magic on edge, but the Slytherin didn’t seem to give a fuck.

He was still staring in front of himself, straight through Harry, but for once the grey eyes didn’t look as if they registered him at all. They seemed to be locked into the distant bitter-sweet memories instead and Harry realized he had never seen the blond like this before, the marble façade gone and a mixture of most unbelievable feelings painted across the pretty narrow face. Sadness, longing, bitterness, tenderness – it was all there and emotions made him unfathomably beautiful. Harry wished he never saw this side of him. Did Ron ever see him like this? The thought made Harry’s heart leap to his throat and the tension and frustration, ringing in his ears, became nearly unbearable.

“Merlin, how I despaired!” the blond suddenly gave out a short laugh that sounded pained as it did desperate, his long, nervous fingers now resting in his lap, intertwined as if in a prayer as if he was trying to keep himself together somehow. “I couldn’t tell a soul... I was bred to hate him, yet I craved him so I would do anything to steal his attention, to feel those fierce blue eyes on me, to get my daily dose of his intoxicating fire. I was willing to get my face caved in for my taunting, I wrote him a bloody song, just to have him think about me... And I could never hope to let him know, he was your little boy-toy and as such entirely beyond my reach... Have you got _any_ idea how that feels? Being head over heels crazy about someone who has nothing but contempt for you? Watching him day after day, knowing you’d sell your soul for one of his incredible smiles and only ever see his eyes grow dark and stormy at the sight of you.”

The sigh the blond gave was almost imperceptible as if the weight of those years still somehow lay heavy on his soul and it was all it took for Harry to see how very vulnerable Malfoy had become. The Slytherin rubbed his long elegant fingers at his temples almost absent-mindedly, as if he had a vision he wanted to chase away and continued hastily:

“Don't you think I didn't know all too well how hopeless my blind, foolish obsession was! I've tried... I've _god-honest tried_ to forget him. Once the war ended... I've been through a thousand beds across the wizarding world for what he gave me with that single kiss, but to no avail... I could never put him behind longer than until our next chance encounter. For a while I would think I was doing fine, but then I would just see him from afar... and my heart kneeled as if there was no time and no one from that bland crowd of countless one-night stands in between. He's… unforgettable. He’s the only one for me, I suppose,” he shrugged as if he didn't know how to explain it better and as the grey eyes finally got came back to focus, he smiled tiredly into Harry's stunned, incredulous face as if he the blow he just delivered exhausted him as well.

“I know how this must sound to you... like I'm talking in a language you can't decipher, as if every word I've said so far, has to be some elaborate lie, designed with Merlin-knows what purpose... Well, Potter,” he leaned forward once again, the grey eyes hard, hungry and nothing short of predatory, “I'm afraid you're not so lucky this time. I'm crazy about him, I've always been crazy about him and I can't see the end of my affection coming any time soon. That time during the war, when the three of you came to be the captives in the Manor - why did you think I let you have my wand with hardly any struggle? Quite simple, really: you were there with Ron and I was willing to protect him at all cost. Even if I nearly paid with my life for it. You see, I was... punished. Unlike yours, not all acts of sacrifice are out in the open to be professed, celebrated and awarded, Potter. No matter. I've done it for him and I would have done it again,” he looked at him with those intense eyes, glittering like quick silver, and Harry knew he believed him. He got hurt to save Ron and them all, how much more was he willing to do?

But Malfoy must have misunderstood his silence. His brow frowned and his grey eyes went darker with some sort of wild emotion Harry had never seen in his face before. Passion, it was passion, but it was so unfamiliar on that usually so hard and impenetrable face Harry could barely name it.

“Still think I'm lying, do you? That day at the Forbidden Forest – I was there for him, I followed him, I wanted to see... oh, I don't even know anymore, I doubt it even knew it back then. I watched him slowly make a mess out of you with all that innocent flirting of his - just bloody porn, when he does it, isn't it? - and I had overheard your conversation and I couldn’t stay behind. I was hypnotized by what he was doing to you, I wanted to see Ron Weasley love for once and I knew I was never going to get a better chance; a blind fool could have seen how badly you had it for each other. I was practically setting myself up to get hurt at the end of that road, but it didn’t matter, because I was going to get hurt by him and I would take what little I could get, as long as it came from him. You know what happened there... I... it messed me up completely. I’ll spare you the details, but I no longer knew left from right, watching him make love to you, I was... done in.

And when he found me...”

The blond stopped abruptly and Harry could hear his heart beat violently in his neck, suffocating him so he could barely speak.

“When he found you – what?” he said, his throat so dry he barely forced the words out and once it came out, his voice was so rough as if he had been crying for days. He might as well have been.

But Malfoy only shook his head as if he couldn’t bear to talk about it and closed his eyes as if he wanted to keep whatever was in his head to himself.

“I can’t...” he said and his shoulders slumped as if he was getting defeated by the memory living inside of his mind. “I can’t tell you,” he repeated feverishly almost as if he was trying to persuade himself and not Harry. “It’s not my story to tell. Not only mine.”

“But you...”

“... promised, I know. Look, Potter, this is... hard for me.”

He looked Harry in the eye and there was a dark shadow in those grey eyes as if a veil had dropped and he no longer had access to Malfoy’s soul.  

“This... begging business, it’s hard,” the blond said curtly. “I’m a Malfoy, we’re not bred to beg, but if it’s going to get me what I want... I suppose...”

His voice faded as if he ran out of strength and in the end he only whispered desperately:

“You could leave me with some dignity, you know...”

“Look, Malfoy...” Harry tried because the blond confused him like no one had ever confused him before and he didn’t know what to feel for him. He could murder him - and at the same time he felt the depth of his despair through the distance between them and Harry was not a cruel man. But even now, the Slytherin was not surrendering his weapons; somehow he pulled himself together and raised his hand as if in defence from Harry’s pity:

“No, I... I just need a moment... Look, there’s really not much more to the story that that. I told you already - he broke me again, in a cruellest way possible. The very same way he did all those years back. I never stood a chance. I could not bring myself to harm him and he knew and he used it to protect your love with everything he had.”

“You mean – Ron knew?!” Harry interrupted, his every sense alert and his skin suddenly prickling with a sense of danger. “Are you saying Ron knew... he _knows_ that you’re... that you are supposed to have feelings for him?!”

And the blond smiled. Slowly, enigmatically, and with a strange emotion reflected on his face, almost as if had a precious secret and no one to share it with.

“This is not a question for me,” he said finally, almost with regret as if he had something to say on the subject but decided against it. “I told you, this is not only my story; you need to ask Ron. In the end, what does it matter?” he asked with sudden bitterness that took Harry by surprise. “Would I be here if I stood a chance against you? Begging for scraps, just for a chance to see him every morning? Because when he comes through the door and gives me that killer smile - my day is made, Potter,” he said simply, as if it was some sort of a universal truth. “It's all I want, it's all I need. He’s worth it... worth all the hurt he causes me when I stare into the empty place he disapparates from for long minutes after he’s gone, feeling like I’ve lost him... day after day... but I can bear it as long as I know he’ll be back.”

He paused a little – and added almost as on second thought:

“I can't ask it him, of course. He doesn't even know I'm here. That man would tear himself in two to make you happy. If I thought I stood an ice cube's chance in hell against you, I'd go against you with everything I've got, Potter – ” he said with a sudden surge of passion that nearly knocked Harry of his feet, “- but I don't, I know I don't,” he continued quietly, flatly, sounding defeated.

“What we've got... our bond...” he looked at Harry with a curious look in his eyes, almost as if he was respecting a reaction, “... a bond of 15 years and when you whistle, he'll still come running. You're _his_ Harry. He goes home every night for you. You get to choose if you'll join him or not, as if he's your concubine,” he spit bitterly. “And still he's your man. You have no idea how much you ask of him! He never remarried, never had anyone, he raised those kids all by himself, waiting for you, patiently, to decide his fate. If he was mine...”

The blond stopped himself abruptly and shook his head heavily as if he had no words to express how much that would mean to him. Clearly Draco Malfoy no longer wished to discuss his most private hopes and dreams with a man who had no love for him and who just happened to hold the key to his happiness in his hands - and far away from his reach. He got up quickly, as if he had decided on a whim that this conversation was over and even though his face had once again turned into an unreadable mask, he said in a voice that was not quite free of the heavy emotion he was keeping inside:

“I’ve already said too much. I will be collecting your answer it two days’ time.”

But Harry was no quite finished yet. He got up as well, his fingers gripping the table with a force that was making his knuckles white when he said as calmly as he could muster:

“Before you leave... let me see, if I understand you correctly: you are asking me to leave Ron with you, in your service and – given the new circumstances - not to propose an arrangement that would keep him away from you, am I correct?”

He barely gave Malfoy time to frown when he continued heatedly: “And you _dare_ ask that of me  _after_ you confessed to being head over heels in love with him for the last 25 years and would clearly move Heaven and Earth to get to him?!... – Malfoy, are you mad?! Or do you think I am?! You and your bloody arrogance! You’re as delusional as they come if you dare approach me with such a crazy, impossible request! Do you honestly expect me to trust you around him?” he shouted, for some reason driven beside himself with the young man’s quiet unwillingness to defend himself. “I know how he makes a man feel, I, of all people, _know_ it – and I consider myself reckless and crazy for not asking him to quit this minute! I’m hand-fasted to him, for Merlin’s sake, you can’t expect me to not care that my man spends his days around another bloke who’s bonkers about him! How dare you ask it of me?!”

“Oh, I’d ask a lot more if he’d let me!” Draco Malfoy suddenly exploded with a roar that made Harry go for his wand. “But he’d never forgive me, if I asked for some sacrifice of _his Harry_! No, never his Harry, even if everyone else burns - to hell with everyone else as long as his Harry is safe in his little bubble of forced promises! ... And for Merlin’s sake put that wand away, you fool!” he barked so viciously that Harry didn’t feel the least compelled to follow his request. But now there was something in Malfoy’s eyes besides anger and pain, almost like... fear?

Harry saw him take a few big gulps of air as if he was desperately trying to get a hold of himself and when he spoke next, there was a fake veneer of calmness about his voice: “You’ll hurt him... oh, but you don’t even know what this is about, do you? Raised by Muggles, you don’t know about bonding and what it does to a person... It’s not my place...” he said tiredly, sounding every bit miserable, “...and it’s irrelevant. Just... consider this...”

He looked Harry straight in the eye and said quietly:

“What if Ron’s happiness and Ron becoming yours are no longer one and the same thing? Which would you choose, Saviour? Consider it and give me your answer in two days.”

He disapparated from the spot and even when Harry collapsed in his chair, numb and feeling as if a Giant was standing on his chest and he couldn’t breathe properly, he could still see those deep grey eyes full of bitter sadness and incomprehensible truth burning through memory. And his heart recognised what Draco Malfoy tried to tell him, but his brain just couldn’t fathom: that his love for Ron was not unrequited.  

At least that’s what the Slytherin believed. Well, he must have been wrong then! Ron wouldn’t do that to him! No, never... Ron wouldn’t. Ron loved him. He had said that himself. He’d never let him go. He promised, Harry had made sure of that. And that was the gist of the problem, wasn’t it? Harry, in his despair, _made_ him promise. Was that what Malfoy was referring to with that “ _bubble of forced promises_?” Was Harry really only deluding himself that Ron wanted him, only him and no one but him?

“ _Yours, always.”_

Ron had meant it when he said that, Harry was sure of that. He looked him in the eye back then and saw it; he saw that love that was never meant to be his. But it has been 16 years since then... and 15 of those Ron spend in the company of a gorgeous young man who could woo like no other and who was, self-admittedly, crazy about him. But Ron came home to him every day, didn’t he, whether Harry could make it or not. _“Your concubine”_  , Malfoy had called him bitterly and it took Harry’s breath away when he realized how ugly... and spot on it must have looked from his perspective.

He pressed his hands on his skull as if he was trying to make his brain work properly – and stop it from working at all. He was going crazy with all these speculations – but to ask Ron... It felt as if Dementor’s skeletal hand had reached straight into his chest and pulled his heart out still beating at the very thought. He had once already denied Ron a chance of telling him the truth and right now, when he was standing on the threshold of realizing every dream he’s ever had – it could ruin everything. Did he want to risk it? Because of the crazy blabbing of a jealous serpent? He knew he was willing to forgive Ron any past transgressions. He would just close his eyes, tell himself not to look back, because only their future mattered – and he would have moved on. With Ron. And possibly... without Ron’s heart.

The very thought destroyed something in him; shattered something precious he didn’t even know was there and he could only look at the ruins now, and wonder and bleed... Was he really such a selfish bastard Malfoy was accusing him of? Was it... even _possible_ ... that Ron no longer loved him? How could he possibly live without Ron?! His life wouldn’t be worth a knut! And yet... could he live _with_ him knowing he didn’t hold his heart? Could he do that to him? To Ron, the one person, that mattered above all? To one person he had promised happiness to?

He would have driven himself around the bend with all the questions swirling around his head if he wasn’t startled by a sudden swish of the fireplace in his study coming to life and when Harry saw who stepped out of it, his frown turned into a genuine blissful smile and for a moment he seemed to have forgotten about his problems. If there was one other person that mattered in Harry’s world other than Ron, it was this one.


	55. Of bonds... and family ties

_Come down, slowly_  
_I am waiting by your side_  
_Come down, carefully_  
_I am waiting by your side_  
  
_I'll grab you when you fall_  
_Down to the waking hours_  
_Silent sweeps as golden corn_  
_Down to the waking hours..._

Tiamat, Do you dream of me

 

“Dad... what's wrong?”

Ron was startled by the voice coming from the door of his bedroom and hastily attempted to wipe his eyes as discretely as he could.

“Nothing,” he murmured. “It's nothing... Just some allergy, I reckon, you know I'm always sneezing and... reacting to those bloody plants and frankly, this house could have done with some dusting.”

“Dad... it's nearly the end of summer,” Hugo Weasley said gently. “There's nothing blossoming much _now_ , you know... Have you been crying?”

“No!” Ron said as fiercely as he could muster, but the penetrating look, something Hugo inherited from his perceptive mother, made him squirm uncomfortably. “No... it's nothing. Not crying. You know your dad never cries, right?”

“Dad... you're not going to go all Weasley on me, are you?” Hugo said in a voice that was a curious mixture of stern and gentle as if he knew that it wouldn't do to pressure his big dad too hard in the moment of his weakness - but he wasn't ready to let go either.

“I have no idea what you're on about, young man, I _am_ a Weasley, and last time I checked, you were one, too, no matter how much time you spend with your mother!” Ron mumbled stubbornly, fully aware that he could only stall, but not really escape the inquisition. This particular son of his, who shockingly looked like a teenage version of himself, had all Hermione's brilliance and, sadly, the Prewett spirit on top of that. What Hugo Weasley wanted, Hugo Weasley got. Mostly from Harry, as the family joke went. If you thought something was impossible, you just had to make Hugo Weasley ask it of Harry Potter and it was as good as done. 

Harry. He shouldn't be feeling so raw and... wronged when he thought of him. He shouldn't. Harry was good and... Harry didn't know. It wasn't Harry's fault that Ron was such a cheating bastard who had idiotically fallen for another man. Harry had no idea of the despair he had caused when he made him promise... But promise he did and when Harry asked... he would go. It was the right thing to do. If only there was a way to at least keep what little he had with Draco... 

He's thought of nothing else for the whole too short summer that seemed to rush by with ominous speed, but his panicked, anxious mind came up with nothing. He knew Harry wouldn't understand if Ron asked to stay with the Malfoys. There was no need for that, no need for it for years already, and Harry only let it slide because it was convenient and because he couldn't offer him a better alternative. But he was clear – as soon as the kids were out of the house, he wasn't letting go of Ron again and Ron knew by occasional bitter remark that the end of his service with Draco Malfoy couldn't come fast enough. 

“I hardly see mom these days, you know that,” Hugo interrupted his thoughts. “She practically sleeps at the Ministry and I don't know how Victor and her ever got to call what they have a relationship. I suppose it fits them both – she's constantly up to her nose into her projects and he's always away on this training practice or the other championship his team competes at. But they both look happy and I'm glad mom has someone to call her own. It's been too long... she's been alone for too long,” he said adamantly and Ron smirked in a way that would make Draco Malfoy proud of him.

“Oh... and you wouldn't happen to have anything to do with your mother hitting it off with her old flame, would you? She happened to mention that “ _Mom,_ c _ould you please ask Victor to coach me in person, he's so busy I'm afraid to ask, but he will do it if you ask it of him and you know I need to learn from the best!_” plea of yours, which took her to Bulgaria last summer! We do talk, you know!” Ron had to laugh at the mask of innocence slipping to place onto Hugo's face with no effort – honestly, he even blinked! - because he knew his talented son like the back of his hand: no way this was not Hugo's doing! For all Ron knew, his son was capable of slipping them both the lust potion and locking them up until they figured out what he wanted them to do. _Slytherin_. He sighed heavily; still quite unable to comprehend that he had sired the only Slytherin in the abundance of Weasley children, much to an immense amusement of his lover. He'd only stopped teasing him about it once the Hat sorted his Scorpius as a Ravenclaw and nearly gave the Grandfather Malfoy a cardiac arrest. 

Just the thought of Draco made it seem like the world drowned in shadow again. How on Earth is he ever going to manage without seeing him for longer periods of time... days, maybe weeks...? The very idea made him nauseous. But he had to be careful, this was no time to give into his despair, Hugo was exceptionally observant and Ron reckoned none of his kids needed to know what a mess their stupid dad had made of his life.

“Have you been to Harry's yet?” he asked him to redirect his attention, because it was no secret that one way to capture Hugo's attention was to mention Harry – just Harry, never Uncle Harry, not even when he was little, as if “uncle” implied a relationship that was just not the right one for Hugo. Those two simply adored each other and usually, when one brought up Harry, Hugo just beamed and a thousand and one plan, question and story came to life. But not this time. Hugo just gave him one of those long perusing looks that brought his mother out in him and said quietly:

“Not yet. But I was about to go. When I get there, shall I tell him then, that I found my big dad, who never cries, doing just that? I reckon it will take him about 5 seconds to get here and ask you what on Merlin's square Earth is wrong with you. And I have a feeling you won't get rid of him as easily as you are hoping to get rid of me.”

“You evil Slytherin, you,” moaned Ron and his shoulders slumped. “Don't you get telling Harry anything. It's... nothing... it'll sort itself out.”

“Then give me a reason not to say anything, dad!” Hugo glued himself from the door-frame and approached him. “I'm not dumb, you know. I came home from Bulgaria last night, ready to hug my big happy dad - _who never cries_ -” he said pointedly and at the exasperated look in Ron's eyes continued, “- and whom I haven't seen in two months. And instead of a hug and an ear-to-ear smile I'm greeted with a sombre expression, forced smile and the red-rimmed eyes. Why don't you...”

“Why can't you just leave me alone?!” frustration and anger burst out of Ron. “Merlin Almighty! You're just as annoying as your mother ever was; she also never knew when to call it quits! Why do you have to...”

“Because your _barking_ nor your _crying_ are going to make it go away, whatever is bothering you, dad!” Hugo shouted and Ron stared at his carbon-copy son, shell-shocked. He could barely remember hearing Hugo shout... like, ever - he didn't even know he could. He sounded shockingly like himself and it was almost as if his own, younger reflection was the one bellowing at him angrily and it sort of broke his heart a little bit. It was as if a boy from the past was trying to tell him what a fool he had become and what misery he dragged behind him and it just wasn't right, it should not have been like this.

“You don't know what you're asking of me,” he said bitterly. “Honestly, you have no idea. Some things are best left unsaid. Let's just forget...”

“Dad... no,” Hugo interrupted adamantly and then took a big gulp of air and added quietly, as if he knew he was treading dangerous waters: “This wouldn't happen to have anything to do with Scorpius's father, would it?”

Ron's world came to a slow halt.

“How did you...?” he asked in a shaky voice, feeling the edges of his world fraying and falling apart, but Hugo just shook his head, as if he wanted to tell him it wasn't him and when he delivered his explanation hastily, it sounded almost as if he was embarrassed: 

“Not me. I didn't have a clue. Not until a few days ago. Scorpius... he came to talk to Albie. He was... distressed. Said his dad was a wreck... and then he blurted out he saw you once; you and... his dad. Kissing, he said. Kissing as if you were drinking the life out of his each other and when you left him, he looked as if you did just that. Shattered, he said. His words, not mine,” he added quickly, but Ron's mind was still numb as if his whole Universe suddenly found itself on shaky feet. They were so careful, held back so much around the kids, tried so hard – and all it took was once, one transgression, one desperate, hopeless goodbye kiss - and the whole world of lies, betrayal and neglect they had so carefully built, had come crumbling to ashes. 

He looked at his child as if looking for answers and he was seeing him for the first time, all grown up, as smart and confident as he himself never was, and he saw the beauty and kindness in him he could never see in himself. He knew then their relationship he had reached a boundary he had no idea how to tackle. Should he pull the father figure authority on him to keep the precious father-son relationship intact? Because that would have been the safe thing to do. It was also very possibly stupid. Hugo knew enough – and having witnessed on more than one occasion how unscrupulous his son could be in protecting the ones he loved, Ron had little doubt that he would take whatever it was that he thought he knew to the one person they both valued above all others: to Harry. 

So what was left, was that other, scary option: crossing the line behind which Hugo, no longer only his son, but Hugo, his friend and confidant waited for him with a solemn, worried look in his eyes – and Ron knew that he only ever had an illusion of a choice. He could only decide on crossing the line by his own choice, or be forced to do it. Hugo was ready.

“You know, sometimes you're scarily alike your mother,” he smiled dejectedly and his own voice sounded hollow and tired to him. “I bet you'd just do legilimency on me if I didn't tell you, wouldn't you?” he looked at him almost pleadingly as if hoping for some sort of excuse to do this, for connection that would make this easier and Hugo, wonderfully observant and perceptive Hugo understood. He quietly crossed the few steps that still separated him from the bed, where his father sat huddled into himself like a heap of misery, and dropped his weight down next to him.

“Possibly,” he said softly, with a small smile in the corner of his pretty mouth. “We, Slytherins, pride ourselves on our ability to get what we want, you know that, you Gryffindor dork. The way I see it, you're lucky I haven't attempted to feed you Veritaserum yet!” he put his narrow long arm on top of his dad's and squeezed gently, reassuringly. And Ron let out a long, trembling breath as if he wasn't entirely certain if what he was about to do was the right choice – but, really, he had no better option. 

“I suppose you're old enough...” he said in a shaky voice, when Hugo leaned into him and pressed his head into the crook of his neck as he used to do, when he was still just a child.

“I'm 18, dad,” Hugo spoke calmly in that warm, honey-like voice he had inherited from his father. “I'm no longer a child, I haven't been one for a while; not in the way you see me, anyway. I reckon I'm old enough... and perhaps what you have to say to me isn't as much of a news as you imagine,” he said as softly as he could, the long fingers of his hand still wrapped tightly around the hand of his dad as if he wanted to tell him that he was willing to stick with him regardless of what he had to say.

“I guess you boys are smarter than we, the silly fossils, give you the credit for, huh?” Ron smiled sadly. “I suppose it soon won't matter anyway... And I have to tell someone or my head will explode from all the craziness running inside... or my stupid heart will,” he said quietly, staring in front of himself as if trying to find a way how to begin, where to start a story that will put him and all their lives in a drastically different perspective for the son he loved with all his heart. 

“Perhaps...” Hugo moved and sat with his back against the head-board of the bed and gently pulled his father sideways, until his head was resting in his lap. “... like this,” he finished when he pushed a pillow under Ron's head and trod gently with fingers through his hair. “You're all set, dad,” he said simply. “You need to talk.”

“Yeah...” Ron said slowly. “I suppose I am. I hope you are, son. I hope you don't end up hating me when you know it all. There's a lot to be said about what a fool your father was... and still remains to this day. Just... you need to remember that I was roughly the same age as you are now when it all started, nowhere near as smart and more than just a little bit confused - so please don’t judge me too harshly...”

He closed his eyes and exhaled heavily once again. And once he opened his eyes again, he seemed to have made up his mind.

“I guess... it all started with a very foolish kiss...” he began in a tired, shaky voice, lined with determination.

And a good hour later his story drowned with a quiet, bitter: “... and now I really don't know what to do. And that's not even true. I  _do_ know what to do, what I _have_ to do, the only right thing there is for me to do - to set right what I've done wrong all those years back... so much wrong... and Harry deserves so much better... I need to try, for him... I suppose there is no other way. Just that I...”

His eyes got that wild, desperate glow as if there was a battle going on inside of him and he was losing his sanity with it and the words just burst out of him: “I don’t know if I can... how I possibly could... Something here in my chest screams bloody murder and threatens to tear me apart if I go through with it and I don't know how long I'm going to last... but I have to try. I have to at least try.”

The pillow underneath his head was soaked with the tears he didn't even know he had and when he fell silent, a quiet long sigh came above his head as if Hugo Weasley was holding his desperate breath all this time.

“Bloody hell, dad... what a mess,” he said finally, gently, but the simple words, expressing no judgement, just sincere sympathy, made Ron close his eyes and exhale in relief. Only now he realized how relieved he was that Hugo didn’t hate him, that he seemed to understand.

“Yeah...” he said in a thick voice that comes with crying. “Your dad’s a proper certified fool. Look at what a mess I’ve made of everyone’s lives! I wish there weren’t so many others forced to pay for it... your mother, Harry, Draco... shit...”

His voice broke again, as Hugo’ s long palm covered his face and his child leaned over to kiss him on the cheek.

“Shhh... it’ll be alright, yeah? I promise... It’ll all sort itself out. Don’t work yourself into a frenzy, dad. You need to rest now; you look like the death warmed up. Harry will bring you back to the store if you show up like this and Scorpius’s dad will shout at everyone what are we doing with you – and he’s most got most awful shouting voice, I’d rather avoid that if I can!”

And somehow those words made Ron crack a small, exhausted smile in the midst of his misery.

“He really does, doesn’t he?” he said in a broken voice and obediently closed his eyes. “But you have no idea how precious he is, when he’s all mine...” he whispered, drifting away. The bone-deep tiredness he couldn’t get rid of for the last few days, filled with despair, was slowly melting away; almost like his confession released some terrible weight inside of him and left him strangely deflated - and this emptiness was the most wonderful thing ever. Hugo’s fingers kept on treading gently through his hair, helping him relax and only when the younger redhead felt his dad’s weight turn leaden, that of a man flat out, he leaned back onto the headboard and let out an exasperated puff of air.

What a mess indeed! His dad's story was barely on this side of credible and yet Hugo had no doubt that his father had only ever given him a simplified version of it. There were several occasions in his quiet monologue, when Hugo nearly jumped in and interrupted him; his magnificent, curious mind demanding more details and further explanations, but he managed to hold himself back until the very end of dad's story, because this was just too fascinating and the danger of story remaining unfinished because of his prodding, too real. And now that it was over, he barely knew where to start processing his words. Blimey, dad! There were depths to his father he never would have guessed... 

Well, obviously Hugo was not daft enough to miss that there was more than just a simple camaraderie between his dad and Harry, anyone with a pair of eyes still in a working condition could have guessed that - Harry practically drooled over his dad and dad was always just a bit too touchy-feely with Harry for this to pass for a common friendship. But Hugo didn't know they were so... serious about it, did he?! He tried to be happy for them, he really did, but when dad touched the thin golden band on his hand and said the words –  _Yours, always_ – to make them appear, Hugo's heart might have died just a little... for his very own reasons. _Hand-fasted._ His quiet, inconspicuous dad, who never made a move towards another relationship once he parted ways with him mom, was hand-fasted to the Saviour of the wizarding world and he never spoke of it, he never told anyone. Hugo knew if it was himself, he wouldn't be able to shut up about it; if Harry chose him, he would have... well, it didn't matter now, did it? Never happening. Not now, not ever. Not for Hugo.

But for his dad... it wasn't even enough. He was hand-fasted to Harry Potter himself and it was not enough; it was not the thing that kept him together and defined him. He was also bonded. Merlin!  _Bonded_ ! To Draco Malfoy, of all people, to the one person that Harry couldn’t stand mentioned. And for a good reason, it seemed – somehow he must have felt the very real danger the handsome blond man Ron got to see every day presented to the precious thing Harry held with his father. Bonded...

Hugo could hardly believe it. His dad, Ron Weasley, was  _bonded_ , for real, just like the fabled heroes from the stories of old were – and he had mentioned it to Hugo so matter-of-factly as if he barely knew what it entailed! Ever since he had come across the notion of bonding and found out that it was real, Hugo was fascinated with it. He had researched it and obsessed over it for... personal reasons, yet in spite of all the time and effort he put in it, he had never come across anyone who was bonded, almost as if the old practice was somehow completely discontinued, or perhaps, carefully kept private. And now, lying here in his lap so peacefully, the man that gave him life told him he had the experience Hugo so desperately craved. 

Hugo knew all his knowledge and his magnificent intellect couldn’t help him here – one simply had no way of feeling what it meant to be bonded until one took part in it. He saw the soft light of unprofessed love in his father’s eyes when he spoke of Draco Malfoy, he saw what a wreck the cruel, unrelenting bond was making of his father’s heart and life – and yet Hugo's very heart ached for that very same feeling and he was filled with impossible longing. It was just... that he felt it, deep down in his soul, as if it had already happened to him, as if his soul had already attached itself to the one person that was always at the very centre of his existence – and yet there was no evidence that it was not just one-sided, as if some spontaneous, botched bonding had happened, that only ever left him feeling like he belonged and kept the other person oblivious about it.

He never told a soul and yet he kept his secret out there in the open, for all to see. Because everyone seemed to know that there was just one person for Hugo. His father and mother never questioned him about girlfriends – or boyfriends for that matter – only Grandma Molly occasionally pried into him with her curiosity, but she was no match for his Slytherin wit –  _“...need to build up a career”, “Dates will wait, but one can only play Quidditch for so long, grandma!”, “It would be so unfair to the other person, with long absences and such...”,_ _“... and trade my favourite grandma for another woman – never!”..._ Easy. She was easy to deter and no one else ever asked, not even his cousins, as if they had realized how vulnerable he had made himself with his unspoken affection towards the one man he could never have and their silence built up a protective wall around him. 

But Hugo knew that if he was asked directly, he would have told. He didn't hide it on purpose; he never spoke of it because no one had ever asked. It must have been, Hugo guessed, because they already knew and they pitied him because his heart had chosen a most obvious, yet most impossible person.

Harry. It was Harry – who else? There was never anyone else for Hugo and there never would be, Hugo's heart recognised no other love. Loving Harry Potter was his first conscious memory and he would go to his grave with this impossible, unrequited feeling. The very thought of Harry lit up his day, the two months without him - he had chosen to do them, with determination he inherited from his mother, he decided to test his affection so - they were almost unbearable, but somehow he had gotten through them, he wrote every day and when the longing got too bad, he would stick his head through the fireplace and fire-call, just to see him. He knew Harry... cared for him, there was proof enough that he enjoyed his company and Hugo knew he missed him – but here, in his lap lay the very reason why Hugo stood zero chance of ever professing his love. He stared down at his handsome, sleeping dad, hating and loving him all in one, and he was more aware than ever of how impossible it all was. Harry was never going to be his. Not as long as he thought he could have dad and even then... Hugo would only ever be a replacement.

Harry Potter loved the boy he saw grew up, but he barely noticed that this boy was no more and that he's been replaced by a quiet young man who was desperately, head over heels smitten by him. He had yet to notice Hugo had become a man, how could he ever love him as a one?! Harry indeed seemed completely oblivious to the fact that his favourite nephew, his “child crush” had grown up and that the time has come when he was supposed to be high on hormones, crushing on a different person every day and date his way through the wizarding world. When Hugo had finished Hogwarts with all the NEWTs his mother ever got and even a few extra, Harry seemed shocked out of his skin when Hugo came to tell him that he was taking two months off to train with his mother's new/old flame, so he would be fit to start his first season as a reserve Keeper for the Chudley Cannons, his dad's and Harry's favourite team.

“But you're only... 18...” Harry discovered in sudden realization and went quiet for a while, as if in shock. “But why Quidditch?” he finally managed as if he hasn't completely come to terms with Hugo's age yet.

Why, indeed? Hugo could have picked any job he wanted; there were owls nearly pushing each other out of the way with the daily offers of positions for the prodigy son of the equally brilliant youngest Minister the wizarding England has ever had – but intellectual achievements and how to employ them were far from the bedazzled mind of one Hugo Weasley. He knew he could afford a few years adrift on a low-pay, his dad's savings, especially set aside for each of his children, had made sure of that. Once he had a steady, generously-paying job, Ron was determined to give his kids the freedom of choice, which someone like him, constantly having to worry about the money, never had – and Hugo had never been more grateful for dad's mumbled  _“here... something to get you started”_ than the day he signed with the Cannons. 

Because he would eat garbage, if that meant that he got to stay near Harry and occasionally feel his eyes on him when he played. School was never a problem for Hugo, because his favourite person was right there with him all the time, and Hugo tried as hard as he did for him, to prove his worth and impress Harry with everything he did. Everything was aimed at that, even if Harry didn't know – and the rest of the world didn't seem to mind as they stared in awe and his parents nearly burst with pride. No one cared why he had worked so hard and Hugo was none too eager to explain and to throw himself out to be ridiculed by others. It would not do for a Slytherin to be desperately crushing on the Head of the Gryffindor house. 

Hugo’s only defeat when it came to school, was on the very first day, when the Sorting hat flat out refused to sort him as a Gryffindor the way it did Freddie and the way Hugo begged it to, mumbling something about  _“way too smart and mischievous”_ ,  _“could be dangerous”_ – and the silly old thing sent him straight off to the table dressed in green, against a deadly silence of the entire Great Hall. Hugo never forgot how badly his knees shook and how he barely saw where he was going when his eyes filled with desperate tears he tried so hard not to spill. Dad would be livid! He could barely stomach Rose being sorted as a Ravenclaw –  _“I can’t believe it, Harry, the Weasleys have always been Gryffindors and Gryffindors only!”_ – he would probably renounce him over such a disappointment! He hasn’t even started school and he was already a failure! 

Only... there was suddenly a sound of the solitary clapping echoing through the Great Hall – and Harry Potter stood there, grinning most enthusiastically, applauding so furiously to his favourite nephew that pretty soon everyone joined in and Hugo’s sorrow suddenly didn’t feel nearly as heavy. Fuck it, he was a Weasley and he was proud of it. Surely Harry would help telling his dad if he asked it of him and if the snakes had a problem with having a Weasley in their midst, they better get used to it before they find out what it means to share the dorm with the nephew of legendary Fred and George Weasley! He knew he’d have to take shit from Freddie from now on, who looked at him half smug-half disappointed across the hall. But he also knew if he asked his twin brother’s help in teaching the serpents a lesson, Freddie would not hesitate to lend him a hand. They were not as tight as his uncles had once been, but when one of them was in trouble, they always had each other's back. 

Not that he ever needed it, no. Not after Professor Potter himself very pointedly intervened, personally, with a few of those stupid enough to mess with Hugo – and Hugo found out that being a Slytherin was possibly the best thing that could have happened to him. It came with shockingly low expectations, it singled him out from the rest of the Weasley clan roaming about Hogwarts at the time and it made Harry worry and care about him the way he never did about any of the other family’s offspring. He would often check on Hugo, secretly take him to Hogsmeade for a Sunday treat or pull him out of the dorm to spend an afternoon with him when he had a free period or two and felt like some company. He was Harry Potter after all, he could bloody well do as he pleased as long as Hugo’s academic merits were impeccable and Hugo found himself nearly floating a foot above the ground in pride and joy whenever he got a message in Harry’s writing  _“Come quickly, you seriously need to see this!”_ or some such. For Hugo it was all about Harry and it would never be different, that much he knew. 

There really never was a shift in his emotions towards Harry, he had always loved him, only that once he loved him with that warm trusting childish love that bordered on hero-worship – and throughout his teenage years it had morphed into a quiet, more desperate, needy love as he slowly came to realize that Harry loved him in every other way but this. But he never quite understood why Harry was so oblivious to all the affection directed at him – and boy, there was a lot of it! In a school full of hormone-pumped teenagers where he was a living legend, Harry Potter had seen it all. There were hysterical girls stalking him and threatening to throw themselves from the Astronomy Tower in unrequited love (dad told Hugo that a special slowdown charms as well as a strong cushioning charm had been installed upon that very tower years ago in case anyone was crazy enough to try), panties flying at him from the arena around the Quidditch pitch, high-strung teenagers “fainting” in his presence only to be “saved” by him and even ridiculously bold attempts to gain his attention such as a near-legendary one involving whipped cream, strawberries and a desperate half-naked girl, determined to make history. 

But Harry never fell for any of it – no matter if it left him laughing or howling in anger at the immature folly - and here, in Hugo's lap was the reason. Ron Weasley, his dad. Harry's quiet companion for nearly a quarter of a century; a boy, now a man, who won his heart all those years back by showing him how to love; a man who was so devoted to Harry that he was willing to lie about the fact that he no longer had a heart to give him. He had to try, he had told Hugo with a determination of a man, desperate enough to self-destruct to set things right, he had to, even though he risked to ruin his own heart and that of his lover in the futile attempt. 

Regardless of what his dad had said, Hugo didn’t think he was a fool... only right _mental!_ Everyone knew that you didn’t just go and break up two people who were bonded; that was just... insane! And yet, Hugo sighed in realization, his Weasley-stubborn dad was dead-set on trying. Hugo knew what this was: this was the only way his dad could think of to finally release the terrible guilt he had been carrying inside for years regarding Harry. Ron loved him, he loved his best mate and lover fiercely – yet for all his determination he could not deny, that he was no longer in love with him and perhaps never was. Much like Hugo's own heart, his dad's also went on a rampage and chose a most impossible man after its own irrational liking, and his dad was just as powerless to stop the insane, inexplicable attachment as Hugo had been. It seemed the father and son had more in common than just their stunningly similar looks.

Hugo observed his dad quietly for a few moments, thinking if he even realized how special he was; trying to discern if there was something in his appearance that managed to captivate and bewitch Harry to a point that he hardly knew anyone else existed. But there was nothing that he didn't have as well. Ron was basically a slightly aged version of him; perhaps his nose had been a bit more prominent than that of his son's and Hugo's silken red hair had a fullness and a wave in it that Ron's liquid hair did not – but that, minus the few wrinkles, was it. They were shockingly alike. They were the same above average height, Hugo's lanky build was already morphing into a lightly-muscled form that would turn heads even when he was past his prime, and with years the violently red hair will mellow down a shade or two to become more golden than red. There was nearly no difference. 

And yet to the eyes of one Harry Potter, there was nothing  _but_ difference, Hugo knew. He was not his dad, he would never be. He did not share Harry's life for as long as his dad did, he did not go through hell for him – though he knew he would, with a smile on his face – he was not there when Harry slowly outgrew his boyish form and his boyish feelings and he was not there when they've found their target: his dad. Harry would never love him the way he loved his father – and yet Hugo didn't think that loving his dad as obsessively as he did, was necessarily good for Harry. And the way Harry loved Ron, was certainly going to make his dad miserable, more so every day. 

Bonded people could not last long without their mate, Hugo had studied enough bonding to write a book about it and he knew as much – and sooner or later his father would attempt to seek his bonded mate out (or be sought out as Draco Malfoy didn't look like much like a man who stood by the side and meekly let his destiny be handled by others to Hugo) – and then the whole havoc would break loose. There would be heartbreak to say the least, perhaps friendships broken beyond mend, crushed dreams, lives and expectations, old grudges coming to life and – Merlin Almighty, Hugo had never thought of it, but what if Harry, poor orphaned Harry, raised by Muggles, never really came across the notion of bonding and would attempt to harm Draco Malfoy?! He could inadvertently hurt Ron and he would never forgive himself for that!

Hugo's magnificent mind was now working with full throttle. He couldn't have that. He couldn't have his father in danger, Harry hurt and god-knows-what other calamity happen to the quiet little patch of happiness they have created of their lives. He had promised his dad that everything would work itself out – and it seems as if “ _it working itself out”_ bore a label with his name on. For as much as Hugo Weasley looked like his father – he was very much his mother's son, and Hermione Granger could never quietly stand by and watch disaster unfold, not if she could help it. And neither would Hugo, he knew.

His dad deserved better, and so did Harry. Hugo at least had to try, even if everyone ends up hating him for meddling. His mother was often the target of open hostility for sticking her nose into other creature's matters, but in the end she was usually right and the only one that came with any kind of solution. But Hugo didn't have time for elaborate plans. He would have to improvise and save as much as could be saved, before his silly father burned down the house he attempted to keep warm with his good intentions. Hugo loved his dad, he truly did, but the man could make a mess that Merlin himself could not untangle and Hugo knew that without his intervention their lives were headed for disaster. Time to act then. 

As if on cue, there was a soft sound of apparition and suddenly there was Draco Malfoy standing in his dad's bedroom, looking in a right state.

“Ron...” he started, and Hugo had never heard the man's voice sound so raw. The handsome blond shut up abruptly when he saw that Ron was not alone and Hugo saw it on his face that the was temporarily shocked into silence. Perhaps it was the surreal scene in front of his eyes, or possibly Hugo's likeness to his father that had confused Scorpius's dad beyond words, but to Hugo he could not have been more welcome. He put a finger on his mouth to indicate him to keep silent and then invited him over with a motion of his hand.

“Oh, Merlin be thanked, finally!” he whispered. “My legs were about to turn numb and I can’t reach my bloody wand! Could you possibly... yeah, there... thanks, Mr. Malfoy. I really didn’t want to wake dad up; he looked as if he hadn’t slept for days! Is it possible that you stay with him for the rest of the day? I really need to be somewhere and... perfect, it’s so good of you to have come by and check on him!”

Hugo was babbling not to give his visitor a chance to start asking questions. His dad was now in safe hands, as safe as it got, and Hugo knew it was time for him to leave. Should he fail – the few short moments together were likely the last ones his dad and Draco Malfoy were about to get for some time to come. He paid a side-glance to the blond man, who had yet to say a word, and who kept himself busy by covering his dad with a blanket and moving the stray hairs out of his face with one simple loving motion before he quietly sat down next to him. Hugo was in awe how the slightest change in his expression made him look as if he was completely smitten by his lover; almost as if a mask he wore to face the world had melted off and the true Draco Malfoy, a very much in love one, surfaced. His dad mumbled something in his sleep and smiled as if he had felt his presence and Hugo’s heart broke just a little when the blond man by his side dropped all the pretences and leaned down to kiss him in the corner of his mouth and whispered something in his ear that made his dad snuggle against him and sigh happily.  _“Precious”_ , that was how his dad had called him and when Hugo saw Draco Malfoy put his arms around his father and hold on for dear life, he knew what dad had meant.

“Yeah... I’ll be just... tell my dad I’ll be back in the morning,” he said awkwardly in place of a goodbye, but there was no reply, as if Draco Malfoy had become completely immersed in the world he shared with his dad and Hugo could no longer reach him. The redhead knew that he only had to disapparate and the blond would come to lie down at his father’s side, he barely stayed inches away as it was. As terrific as bonding was, it came with a terrible price to those forced to part. And if he did nothing, Hugo knew that this overwhelming bond had a potential to destroy them both and he didn’t want to risk it, he didn’t even want to think about losing his dad to... anything. His dad reckoned Harry would make his move as soon as the Hogwarts train disappear in the distance and given Harry’s head-on approach that was his trademark, Ron was very likely right. 

The window of opportunity Hugo had to try to influence the turn of events was this narrow at best – a day and a half was all he had to talk to Harry and give him time to take his words in, perhaps reconsider... He would be hurting Harry beyond belief and he had nothing to offer to him in exchange for the devastation his words were likely to leave behind. Nothing, except... No, he won’t go there, he wasn’t brave enough for that and Harry would never understand. Nothing, Hugo had nothing, yet he had to try. He had never disapparated with a heavier heart.

~

“Hugo!”

Harry Potter got up so fast, the chair behind him nearly toppled over and the big smile suddenly blossoming on his face was genuine.

“Merlin... you're back! C'mere, let me take a good look at you!... Goodness gracious, Hugh, won't you ever stop growing?! This old man won't be able to hug you pretty soon, you Weasley men are horrid! Oh, Hugh...”

The rest of Harry's sentence drowned in a tight bear-hug the lanky youth wrapped around him, but it wasn't like Harry minded much. That was his Hugo, his not-so-secret favourite of all the Weasley children and Harry's heart just stopped – and exploded in joy a little whenever he felt the red head press into the crook of his neck, almost as if Hugo Weasley was still a little boy, even though these days he had to lean down, rather than stretch, to do it. With Hugo around, Harry's mood was instantly improved, nearly elated, as if a weight had been lifted off his heart and things were now finally going to fall to their rightful place. Somehow the quiet redheaded boy had everything it took to make Harry Potter feel like smiling at any point in his life.

And indeed, Hugo Weasley was a considerable force in Harry's life from the very day he was born. There was just something about the little ginger with big blue eyes that melted Harry's heart from the second he first held him. He always had a special connection with the child and even when he got to have his own children – all of them little wonders in their own right – that quiet unspoken bond between him and Ron’s youngest never faded. At the first sight of the messy ginger head the darkest of Harry’s day brightened and when he held the boy closer, warmed by his body-heat, the shy, bright smile Hugo always had in store for him, held magical power to heal his wounds. Even as a child, Hugo could always make him better and with inexplicable feeling Harry never tried to put into words, he made him feel whole. Sometimes after a particularly rotten day, Harry would seek Hugo out, close his eyes with the child in his lap and feel as if he was complete. It was the strangest of feelings and every time he put the little ginger down reluctantly, he immediately felt as if he had let go of something precious.

Hugo was his... weakness, there was no other way of describing it. God, how it nearly made him sick that time during the sorting when that rag of a Sorting Hat called out  _“Slytherin!”_ and he read the devastation on the little freckled face! His heart broke when  he saw Hugo try so hard to keep a brave face, but it was all in vain - Hugo was a Weasley and as such he bore his heart on his sleeve. Harry could barely take his pain; he rushed to help him almost as if Hugo physically needed saving and the grateful, devoted smile Hugo paid him set his world right as well. Harry loved his children, but they could never spin him around quite as much as Hugo could should he feel like it; almost as if Harry knew it was his parental duty to raise his kids into good, honest people – and he had no such obligations when it came to Hugo. He could – and would – spoil Hugo rotten and it was only lucky Hugo hardly ever took advantage of that. 

He was just... right for Harry and Harry was ready to take all the taunting and accusations of favouritism to keep the special bond between them intact. Whenever one of his friends or relatives begrudgingly threw it in his face that he should lay it off with spoiling the child, Harry would only hold him tight, look into the smiling blue eyes and said with barely a straight face:

“You don't understand. I can't disappointed my betrothed. Hugo asked me and I accepted – we're engaged to be wed, aren't we, Hugh?” 

Which inevitably produced a most blissful grin on the pretty, freckled face and only a half-hearted  _“Harry! I was only three!”_ as if Hugo wasn't quite ready to forget. 

If only he had stayed a little child! Somehow, inexplicably, in front of Harry's very eyes, he had grown up to be a young man, so much alike Ron that it sometimes made Harry's heart ache and it hit him with a blunt weight how many years he had spent pining for Ron. He still felt like holding him close whenever he saw him, but with  the awkwardness that came with teenage years still all too well remembered, he had to hold back now, and he didn't want to embarrass the boy. Though, truth be spoken, Hugo didn't seem to mind much whenever Harry was overcome with the need to hug him; he would simply sink into Harry's embrace as if he held his rightful place there and he stayed there happily for as long as Harry would have him. Harry loved him for it – there was no pretence necessary, Harry was simply Hugo's favourite as much as Hugo was Harry's and with so many masks Harry had to keep in place for the people around him, Hugo was wonderfully simple and refreshing.

And god, was he gorgeous! Harry was almost knocked numb when he saw him step out of the fireplace after a two-month absence and shake soot out of the fiery hair: he was every bit as stunning as Ron ever was and it never hit him as hard as then that he was a fully grown young man and that he would soon show up before Harry, hand in hand with... someone – and for some reason the thought felt so very wrong Harry couldn't chase it away fast enough. But when he sunk into the dark, warm space of their embrace, Hugo still felt the same, like his favourite little boy Harry wasn't quite ready to surrender - and yet there was something different. Like it or not, the body he pressed against was very much that of a man and near the familiar scent of Hugo - herbal shampoo, lime broom polish and chocolate frogs, Hugo's favourite  - there was also another, incredibly alluring scent and Harry has never felt so guilty in his life when he felt the very hairs on his neck prickle with excitement he recognised all too well. This was... wrong, that's what it was, because this was Hugo and  _not_ Ron and it was just... he must have been thinking about Ron too much in these last few days to have made such a bloody mess of his mind. He needed to put some distance between them, Hugo's always been able to read every feeling Harry's ever had and he would be appalled!

“When did you return?” he asked him hastily and pushed him away gently just to nearly have the breath knocked out of him from the proximity of the Weasley blue eyes.

“Yesterday,” Hugo spoke and God Almighty, even his voice was the same honey-colour Ron's ever was. Harry was clearly losing his mind, because the distinction between Ron and this new version of grown-up Hugo was rapidly disappearing and... the distance between them clearly needed to be a bit bigger...

“I went to see dad first and... Harry, we need to talk.”

“Sure,” Harry tried to say as matter-of-factly as he could muster, but it came out breathless and barely there, because he finally saw a thin ring of sadness in those mesmerising blue eyes and suddenly he understood what this was all about. 

“I found him crying, Harry,” Hugo said quietly. “And I can't have that. And unless I'm mistaken, neither can you.”

And with a sinking heart Hugo Weasley saw the beloved green eyes flooded with heartbreak and misery for the very first time.

~


	56. Can you feel my heart?

_"Can you hear the silence?_

_Can you see the dark?_

_Can you fix the broken?_

_Can you feel my heart?"_

Bring me the Horizon, Can you feel my heart

 

“Is he alright, then?” Harry asked quietly and Hugo's heart sunk even further into his own, private misery. Even when on the verge of heartbreak, Harry's first thought was to his father, the very reason for the sorrow about to come crushing down on him, and Hugo was painfully reminded of how impossible this was.

He nodded quietly: “I left him in safe hands,” and continued hastily to stop his perceptive uncle to prod further. “Harry... do you know what bonding is?”

And Harry frowned. There was this word again; the one Malfoy had used as if it had meant something beyond what Harry could comprehend and somehow, it had lingered on the back of Harry's mind like a little inconspicuous yet ominous black hole, about to devour his world and let it sink into darkness. 

“Well...” he started awkwardly, “I know what it technically means, in English language – but if there's any magical meaning to it beyond that...”

His words slowly died on his lips because at the sight of Hugo's pretty face, alight with compassion and sympathy, he came to a sudden realization that this was it, exactly, that he wasn't imagining things and that the Malfoy menace was indeed trying to tell him something.

“No,” he finally said firmly, yet tiredly. “I don't know what it means in the magical terms... Malfoy had used it...” And he stopped abruptly when the stunned expression on Hugo's face reminded him that he didn't, in fact, know that he had been talking to Draco Malfoy recently.

“He was here earlier,” he explained curtly. “The selfish bastard wants me to leave Ron in his employment, so he could drool over him!” he said with a sudden surge of bitter hatred. “As if I ever would!” he added fiercely. “This has been mistake from the start and it's about time Ron gets a proper job, not one pampering the spoiled brat!”

“Not so selfish after all,” Hugo said quietly and kept his eyes on Harry, because this, the next few moments and Harry's reaction are going to be crucial in deciding all their faith.

“I'm guessing you already know that Draco is crazy about dad,” he said firmly and his heart squeezed painfully in his chest at the flash of misery in the legendary green eyes. God, how he hated doing this, making Harry devastated – yet there was no other way. “But what you probably don't know is that Draco and my dad are bonded and... Harry – bonding is the most sacred relationship two magical beings can ever have.”

He could tell the exact moment when the lightning bolt of pain and anxiety struck Harry straight in the chest as the green-eyed man nearly crumbled and Hugo's heart screamed bloody murder at the sight.

“Here,” he said gently and moved towards him to escort him back to the chair into which Harry Potter, possibly the strongest wizard alive, collapsed like a rag doll.

“You don't understand,” Harry said weakly, with a deadly despair of someone drowning and unwilling to let go of anything that might be able to keep him afloat. “Your father and I, we've been... we're...”

“I know, yeah?” Hugo spoke hastily to save his favourite person from unnecessary humiliation and further heartbreak. “Dad told me... I made him tell me... about you and how you came to be... lovers and hand-fasted,” he looked deeply into the shell-shocked face of a man he would sell his soul for to save him from misery. “It's alright. I think I already knew... somehow. I always knew you two had a special relationship that stretched beyond friendship, I just wasn't aware how very... serious it all was, I guess,” he admitted openly and forced himself into a small, awkward smile to show Harry that it was alright, really, even if it was anything but.

“Then why would he...?” Harry tried in a shaky voice, but his thoughts didn't seem to be willing to follow to the place where he was to bury his most precious dreams.

“He didn't do it to hurt you,” Hugo said quietly. “I guess there was something between them that barely recognized a boundary between hatred and love and they were drawn to it, to each other like two moths to the same deadly flame. If Draco was here before, then you must know some of it...?” he asked with near despair, unwilling to put his beloved Harry through more pain than it was absolutely necessary. But Harry just shook his head miserably, numbly:

“Just that there was a kiss... all those years ago, Ron's first one... and that Malfoy witnessed our hand-fasting... and your dad knew and... forced him, somehow, I don't know how, the bastard wouldn't tell me, to keep his mouth shut. You think then...already...?” he looked at Hugo with so much misery in the green eyes that it took everything that Hugo was, not to curse his stupid, reckless father out loud.

“Yes,” he said out heavily instead, forcing the truth out, because as hard as this was, Harry needed to hear it. And then he witnessed Harry Potter, the man who once went to face death with his head held up high, lean forward in his chair and cover his face with the palms of his hands as if he could no longer face the world. And Hugo didn't hesitate. He kneeled down to his Harry and put his arms around him, because he just knew that the Saviour of the wizarding world needed to be held together this once.

“He only did it to make him shut up,” he told him in a desperate, raw voice and hoped for something, anything in his words to bring some relief to the suffering man in his embrace. “That first time he did. But he didn't realize that Draco wasn't ready to let go; that for him, it wasn't going to be only once. I think he must have had a crush on dad ever since that first kiss on and when he finally got a chance to do something about it, he sunk his Slytherin fangs in as deeply as it went. He's a very smart man, he knew how to give dad's wobbly self-esteem a boost he craved and by the time dad realized that this thing between them no longer qualified as some sort of a healthy vent for explosive passion they always had for each other – it was already too late.”

Hugo's fingers combed through Harry's hair lightly, hoping to bring the shattered man next to him some comfort, because he knew how hard this was – and how much harder it was about to get. But there was nothing for it now: he had started it and now he had to explain Harry, hoping against hope that Harry would somehow understand what he was trying to say, why was he even here.

“I suppose... by that time, something much more... intense was already in place and Draco was the first one that recognised it. He told dad he... had feelings for him and dad did what he always does when he panics – he ran. Only – he couldn't. Not very far anyway and not for very long. It took him a while, but when he kept on coming back no matter what, finding excuses and looking for new ones, it finally downed on him that he had played himself into a corner. I think that day, when Draco saved Freddie at the bonfire was the last straw – it made dad infinitely grateful and it was a shock therapy that made him realize how serious this thing, that was once only supposed to be a means to control Draco, a harmless fling, had become. Draco was willing to put his life on the line to make dad see how much he had come to mean to him – and dad didn't have it in him to reject a gesture like that.”

Silence was as heavy as a rain-soaked cloud hovering above them, but Hugo didn't really know how to go on. There was so much more he had to tell Harry, yet he didn't know how and if it was going to devastate Harry further... he didn't know if he even could.

“I knew something had happened that evening,” Harry spoke unexpectedly, tiredly straight into Hugo's shoulder where his head was currently buried. “I never saw Malfoy look at anyone the way he looked at Ron that night. As if he was drunk with him or something. And Ron could hardly bring himself to let him go. I should have known, then. I should have... I should have let Ron tell me. He tried telling me – but I would have none of it. I couldn't bear to hear it. I made him promise to me instead, that he was going to end up with me, and that promise was going to be my insurance policy until all of you kids were old enough to understand...” Harry said bitterly, quietly and Hugo's hands ran down his back soothingly out of their own accord.

“Please, Harry... don't torture yourself with bygones,” the redhead whispered into his hair and he would go to hell and back in that moment to be able to kiss his sorrow and pain away. “It was ages ago... and you had no way of knowing how serious things have become between them after that night. Draco was determined to have dad in one form or another – even though dad had said it, over and over again, that he would never leave you – but another player entered the game at that point, and I think you know best of all people that underestimating that one person comes with an ultimate price: Narcissa Malfoy had followed her son into the Bonfire night; she witnessed Draco's surrender in dad's arms after the drama was over – and she used it to bully – or blackmail, whatever you wish to call it – her son into agreeing to a marriage he didn't want – in exchange of finding him a way to have dad.”

At the mention of Narcissa's name Harry's head shot up in shock and disbelief and against his murmured  _“Again... that woman...”_ Hugo confirmed that Narcissa Malfoy was once again a femme fatale in his life.

“She came up with the idea of hiring dad as Draco's bodyguard – and she never even informed her son about it; he was to be his wedding present. And it was her, ultimately, who performed the ancient rite of bonding. On the very same day of Draco's marriage, during the very same ceremony even.”

“But... why?!” Harry couldn't understand, how it came about, that time and time again, his fate was decided by that one unscrupulous woman, doing everything in her power to make her son come up on top.  

“There's something you should know about bonding, Harry,” Hugo said gently. “There are reasons for which it is called the most sacred of all magical ties – it binds two souls for life, it goes far beyond marriage or hand-fasting or other magical procedures to tie two people into one entity. It cannot be dissolved and the bonded one cannot survive without their mate, not for long anyway. The two souls seek each other out throughout their entire life and they are meant to perish on the same day. Should something happen to Draco... dad would... be gone as well.”

Hugo saw all the blood ran out of Harry's face at these words as if the green-eyed wizard came to realize something and his whispered  _“Of course.... that's why he said... God Almighty, I came so close...”_ told him there was indeed an incident in which the worst could have happened. So he held Harry as close as he could and pressed a little invisible, pained kiss into his hair, feverishly hoping that Harry would merely see it as an act of offering sympathy and comfort and not what it was underneath – the burning, urgent need to take his pain upon himself because it felt so much heavier than his own. 

“Perhaps that's why Narcissa has done it,” the redhead continued thoughtfully, quickly, not to give Harry a chance to start thinking and questioning Hugo's motives for sinking so deeply into his personal space. “To make sure dad would not hurt her son and go unpunished. Or perhaps because it was the only thing she saw fit for their... for the thing between them,” Hugo nearly bit his reckless tongue off for coming so close to mention the word _“love”_ ; something, he wasn't sure Harry was ready to tackle. 

“But how could she?!” Harry erupted. “How could she have done it?! Did they know about it?! Did they agree to it? Did Ron...?”

His voice broke at the impossible thought and Hugo words couldn't come fast enough to at least give him some comfort:

“No, Merlin, no! They didn't know, neither of them. The blasted woman never told anyone! She just went and did it! Dad would not do something like that to you deliberately, Harry, and if you won't believe that, at least believe that his terrible self-esteem won't have him believe that someone would want such a profound life-long attachment to him. No, none of them knew about it... but it doesn't mean it didn't happen.”

And that was the hardest part of the message he had for Harry. His heart crumbled to see how deathly pale his beloved Harry had turned, how hard he tried to comprehend; tried to make himself work around the idea that someone could do that to his Ron and he would take part in such a powerful ritual and not know about it.

“Harry... bonding is complicated,” Hugo tried to explain as gently as he could. “It takes someone with knowledge and means to make the procedure go through, the magic is ancient and whoever is doing it, has to know all the complex enchantments really well – but it won't work if the attachment underneath is not real. To put it simply: Narcissa Malfoy could have done her bit, said the right words, followed the right procedure – and if this... thing between dad and Draco wasn't as heartfelt as the magic of bonding would have it – nothing would have happened, it wouldn't work. But it _did_... happen... It worked,” he told him in a heavy voice laden with misery, because he knew how much it would devastate Harry.

“Love,” said Harry quietly. “Just call it by the name it deserves. Love. They love each other. Ron gave him the one thing I hoped he would give me.”

“Christ, Harry... don't...” Hugo whispered and buried his shaky fingers tightly into the shirt on Harry's back, because it was ruining him to see him so destroyed, ruining him for more reasons than one. “Dad loves you, yeah? He truly, really does,” he tried to tell him hastily, not realizing that somewhere down the road his cheeks had turned wet, because he was his father's son and he was never really good with this emotional thing – but even though it would destroy every last chance he ever had with Harry, even if he had to bury that tiny hope that was only ever alive in his childish heart – he had to tell Harry, Harry deserved to know how much Ron Weasley was willing to sacrifice for him.

“He loves you so much he's willing to try. He told Draco that when you call - he would answer, no matter what. And this thing will tear him apart, it's already tearing him to pieces, but you know how stubborn he can be. He's betrayed you before, ran from you, cheated on you and this once he's determined to be the man you want him to be, because he just loves you that much, because you deserve it. And I guess I'm here to ask you... not to call,” he finally blurted out his reason to seek him out, fully aware what a sorry case he had made for himself and his father.

He should have threatened Harry with Ron's demise, he should have played it more tactically, but he didn't have it in him to manipulate Harry. If it was anyone else... But it wasn't, it was Harry, his beloved Harry, the one person he was willing to sacrifice his own heart for and the very man Hugo couldn't stand to see suffer. 

And when Harry just looked at him up close with those deep green eyes as if Hugo was talking in a language he could not comprehend and immediately shook his head, as if what the redhead was asking of him was so unfathomable it was not even up for discussion, all Hugo’s hopes came crushing down with that one desperate, feverish gesture.

“You can’t ask this of me, you can’t!” Harry whispered frantically. “I can’t lose Ron again... you don’t understand... I can’t. Please don’t ask it of me, please... don’t.”

And he just sat there, with a face once again buried in the palms of his hands, hunched shoulders, looking small and defeated and every bit like the boy that was once stuck in a dusty old cupboard, unwanted, unloved and terribly abandoned - and Hugo no longer knew what to do next. His heart just screamed at him that he had done this, that he had caused Harry this unbearable pain - and how the fuck could he had been so cruel, because nothing was worth the terrible devastation and he should have let him stay ignorant instead, let his father's life play out the way it was meant to... and the loudest of all, the way it nearly rang in his ears, his heart shouted at him to make it better, for fuck's sake to make it better for Harry somehow.

“I should like to be alone for some time, please,” Harry said quietly, his voice strangely dead, as if there wasn't anything left in this world that had any meaning. “I will be alright; I just need to be by myself, please.”

And that terrible deadly void in his voice broke through every last one of Hugo's defences.

Without thinking, without a single thought to spare, he gently cupped Harry’s face and lifted it to look into the pools of green, filled with misery about to spill and told him softly, with a deep despair of a man that had nothing to lose, what he could no longer keep to himself:

“I love you. I love you, Harry. And yes, like that. I know you don’t understand, because I don’t understand it myself, but I do. I know you don’t love me back, not like this, you never will. You only love him... and I’m not my father. But if you ever, and I mean _ever_ , need someone to love you and want you and never leave you, no questions asked, I’m your man. I’d ask nothing in return. I don't need a ring, I don't need a promise and I'd come knowing that you don’t have a heart to give me. 

Because I'm yours. I suppose I always was; from the day I was born, I always found myself in your eyes. I crave to take the pain from you, I crumble under your despair, I'd give you my dad if it was in my power to do so, because I know he can make you happy the way no one else can - and my heart aches to see you happy. Right here, in my chest, everything is off when I see you so torn to pieces and I want to comfort you and put you back together and love you. I just want to love you.

I know you don't want this... this love, but my heart chose you and I have no say in it. And I wish... I wish you could see yourself with my eyes and see what I see in you, if only for a moment. You are my starlight, Harry. I'll always follow you, even when you're far beyond my reach, because without you I'm as lost as one can be. And please... please, don't hate me. Don't hate me for the love I cannot help and don't hate me for spilling it... I had to. Or my heart would burst. I had to own up to it, I had to say it... once, just this once. So you know. I'll never speak of it again and I'll go back to being just Hugo, your family favourite, just one among many. But now you know.”

By the time he was finished, his fingers cupping Harry's face trembled so badly Hugo had to fight an urge to make the grip harder, just to still them down; while Harry just stared at him, wide-eyed and numb and looking so very shocked that Hugo felt every last bit of his heart pull him down, into the ground, as if he wanted to disappear and never live to see the moment of the inevitable rejection.

“So... I came here today...” he started in a shaky voice, but his voice died down, when Harry's bony fingers covered his shaking ones and slowly removed them from his face.

“I see...” Hugo whispered, suddenly sick to his stomach and beyond defenceless. “Harry... please...”

“Don't,” the green-eyed man warned him, his face suddenly a closed book. “Not another word, Hugo.”

“I only wanted to ask... for dad...” the redhead whispered, with the last atoms of strength, his blue eyes pleading for mercy, but Harry Potter just shook his head and Hugo knew he had lost.

He got up, numbly, defeated and paid one last look to the Harry he once knew, to the man that held and broke his heart, to the quiet silhouette standing against the sun, setting in the window behind his back and tried to say goodbye to his dying childish dreams of making this man his own. The sun reflected on the jet-black hair of the most powerful wizard alive and the green eyes shone like two bottomless green ponds and Hugo knew he could live to see a thousand years and never love another. The heart in his chest was strangely calm in this recognition as if Hugo had only come to realize what it already knew. Years from now and worlds apart, he would still love Harry Potter. And somehow this idea put him to peace. He smiled with a tinge of bitterness he felt he would never shake again, and spoke quietly:

“I suppose I won't be taking that position as a reserve Keeper for Chudley Cannons after all. Viktor offered me to train with them in Bulgaria... so I guess I'll be leaving soon.”

He looked up straight into the deep green eyes of his beloved and spoke firmly, yet with just a hint of sadness in his honey-coloured voice:

“I could always be myself around you, Harry, and I guess this once was no different. I’m leaving and you’re about to chose a life that has no room for me – so I want to thank you for always being there for me, for making it a walk in the sun, for always making it better. I guess I tried to do the same today, make things better for everyone involved - only I’m not you, I’m too much like him, my dad, and I blunder all the time... and as my Fate would have it, I haven’t got his luck and his charm and I’m not as easily forgiven. 

But I meant well and I meant every word of it: I’m begging you to remember that you have a heart, the biggest one I ever came across, and I'm asking you not to trade it away for something that may no longer be yours. Not all dreams are meant to be, Harry - just look at me. And, yes – I love you, I meant that part as well. If you ever need this, my shoulder to cry on, my arms around you, my hand to hold on to, my heart – it’s yours, it’s all yours. Always.”

And before Harry could react, he took his hand to steal one final touch to remember him by, his long fingers sweeping across Harry’s sacred ring, making the words glow and the ring warm up and with those brilliant blue eyes still set on Harry's, he disapparated from the spot.

And Harry just stood there, the ring glowing warmly as it had never done before, feeling every bit as if he was offered a precious gem and he let it drop on the floor and saw it shatter. He no longer knew what he wanted to do.

 

 

 


	57. Don't give up...

_"_ _I'll be there when there's nothing left._

_Night and day, holding you._

_Harmony, deep inside your soul._

_Meet me there._  
  
_Can you feel me?_  
_Can you feel me deep inside?"_

Lacuna Coil, Devoted

  


Ron knew those were his arms around him before he ever got to open his eyes. Perhaps it was that exquisite, expensive scent; perhaps the feeling of being protected and loved and put together the right way, the only right way, that made his presence known just as well as he would have seen him in full colour at broad daylight. They were so rare, these moments in which they got to wake up next to each other; in the fifteen years they've spent by each other's side, perhaps it happened a hundred times – those quiet, leisurely, glorious mornings when Ron knew Harry wasn't coming and the kids were at Hermione's; the stolen, covert moments in mornings following an all-night party at the Malfoys that Ron was required to attend and after which Astoria mercifully declared she just needed to rest; the isolated, wonderful mornings here and there that surprised them both and were never enough – and those were all the mornings they got to have together. And they always craved more. 

The years they got to spend together went by all too quickly. They had their little routine of Ron showing up in the morning and leaving in the evening and with it they managed to walk through life side by side, they travelled the world, laughed heaps, talked of everything and nothing, having a blast and a thousand heartbreaks raising little Scorpius and sometimes just hung out around each other in amiable silence. And they fucked, Merlin, they fucked, every chance they got, every bloody minute they could steal to get up to it, as if their bodies knew they needed it, needed that closeness, that feeling of connection and belonging, and they constantly pulled them towards each other to tell them that, yes, this was still it, after all these years, it still was.

Sometimes it was a lengthy, torturous seduction that got triggered in the morning on a whim and dragged on well into the night, when there was not a chance and no opportunity to spend a single moment alone – and when they finally did, they jumped at each other like a couple of ravenous wolves. Sometimes it was nothing but a covert look, full of longing, a tempting, blissful smile or a casual remark laden with innuendos and a quiet invitation – and they would find each other at the first isolated place and just do it, quench their neverending thirst for each other as if there was no tomorrow, no consequences to consider. And very rarely it was this – the tender, painfully beautiful moments of intimacy, when they got to wake up slowly, without anywhere to be, wrapped around each other as if they were indeed one entity, perfect and complete in their solitude, in their want of each other. They were always too short. And they were Ron's favourite.

He was always terribly romantic, though hardly anyone knew that about him. Draco had teased him unrelentingly for it; but Ron wouldn't let up, because he knew the blond secretly adored that part of him. There were always two roses, a red and a white one, at the table when they had their own little anniversary of their Paris adventure, there were chocolates on the pillow during the rare occasions they managed a private getaway and when they were lucky to have a few days in a row to themselves, Ron didn't mind spoiling him with a delicious home-made dinner, a long delightful massage in the candlelight involving molten chocolate and ending in debauchery – and followed by a breakfast in bed for his exhausted lover slumbering happily in their ravaged bed.

But for Ron, nothing really topped waking up next to the one he loved; to his unique exotic scent; to the warmth of his smooth, alabaster skin, still marked with their love-making, to that love that simply spilled across the border beyond reality and sipped into the world of dreams. And he felt him now; pressed against him tightly, as if there was no world beyond their embrace, his long elegant fingers combing through his hair lightly, as if not yet decided if they wanted to disturb his much needed sleep, the soft, pleading mouth looking to wake him up as gently as it went by caressing the tender skin just underneath his ear as if Draco Malfoy was eager to let him know with no words how much he had missed him, how much he wanted him. And it always filled up Ron's heart to the brim with a special kind of elation, pride, and even wonder, that it was really him that the beautiful, distinguished blond came to want and to wake up so gently. Even after all these years it still did.

Not quite fully awake yet, he moaned his eagerness into the warmth of space between them and pushed even closer as if his sleepy brain somehow knew that there was a reason he wanted to be as close as possible to his lover tonight.

“Shhh...” came a quiet reply as if the man by his side didn't want him so restless, so desperate. “I've got this. I've got you. I came. I'm here now, love. I need you as well, god, I need you, Ron.”

“Need...” he mumbled happily and he didn't see any problem with that. The man he loved needed him, he came to get him and Ron was going to indulge him. What could be more right than this?

Yet there seemed to be something nudging at his brain, as if it desperately, angrily tried to remind him of something, something important he should know and remember, but he stubbornly chose to ignore it, because this was simply too exquisite, too delightful and it was taken away from him for too long. He craved this; craved him, craved his silver dragon around him, on top of him, tickling him with his silken hair while breathing desire into him with desperate, hungry kisses. He knew no other way than to respond.

With his eyes still closed, he returned every one of the starved, eager kisses that pulled him right into the middle of the boiling cauldron of passion and desire, left him breathless and dying for more. Draco Malfoy could kiss like no other and it hardly ever took anything more than his skilled, branding mouth for Ron to become undone.

“More...” he whispered straight into his soft, abusing mouth, stealing his warmth, luring his tongue into its intoxicating, addictive depths, and making him light-headed with those unrelenting, sinfully sweet lips capturing his every breath and every urgent whimper before it could leave the tight space between them.

“Need you... more,” he insisted, eagerly, feverishly, because this was somehow urgent and if he didn't get this, seize and keep this elusive, precious thing between them, he might just lose it forever and he didn't know where this thought came from, because he could never lose this, he couldn't live without it, and it was insane that he could ever think of giving it up. This, here, was his; that gorgeous body that offered itself to him so willingly, so freely, and the boiling heart full of stifled feelings of the man that came with it. This, here, defined him; he could never be so very much himself as he was wrapped around Draco Malfoy. He could be tender and boyish if he felt like it, yes, even romantic; or he could be as manly and dominating as they came when his lover asked for it with a barely controlled urgency in a shaky voice. Draco needed Ron's name written all over him, sometimes so violently as if he feared it would ever forget who it belonged to if it didn't bear his marks – and Ron had learned how to bring out the man that could break and release Draco Malfoy onto the surface.

And as gently as their awakening in each other's arms started, it seemed that this was exactly what Draco came here to get. He knew all too well where to touch his fiery lover and how to do it, to make him writhe against his beautiful naked skin with desperate need; he knew the words, the begging ones, the needy ones and a small million of decadent, whispered expletives that fuelled Ron's electrified libido, made him feel as if his very skin was on fire and he could barely hold himself back not to sink into him with little thought to his pain. The redhead couldn't get him open and ready fast enough, as if they were in hurry, as if this was some kind of an emergency, and when the first of his fingers disappeared into the succulent needy hole in search of that special spot that made Draco Malfoy lose it, the wanton yelp that accompanied them sinking in, made Ron abandon the last of his restraints.

It's been days now, days since they last did it; much too long, wasted days and it was always like this when it's been days. Their bodies filled with a need so raw and primal that it took nothing short of some brutality to break the surface of the terrible want they kept inside and let it spill and let it claim them, so they could be one again. When Draco was kept away from him, thought it was never more than a week, Ron cursed Narcissa Malfoy a thousand times a day for the terrible thing that was bonding, because it felt every bit as if he was dragging himself around the world on his knees, cut in half, with a bleeding, festering wound that wouldn't close.

But in moments like this one, when he sunk into his lover with force and pushed out a desperate, unabashed _“ohsweetMerlinfuckRonyes!! Ron... gods, Ron... please... fuck, more... more of you... ohpleasefuck, love me, Ron...”_ \- in moments like this it was all worth it and he knew he'd never have it any other way; he'd never want to be without. He didn't choose this, yet he accepted it with his whole being, as if his fate was somehow decided without his consent, as if Heaven itself had decided that he should love Draco Malfoy. It was beyond his decision and he couldn't bring himself to care. This, here, this man moving underneath him in such blind passion and plain worship, yelping broken words of love and want as if he was dying to have him, no one but him – this was his, this was him, a part of him he never wanted to give up and he never, ever –

“Ron... please don't leave me, Ron...” tore away in a yelp from the gorgeous blond man that was taking his pounding devotion as if there was nothing else for him to have, nothing he'd appreciate more, nothing else he had to live for as his body arched and gave in, finally breaking under an explosion of bliss so powerful it shot Draco Malfoy straight into the numbing blackness – and buried deep inside of that perfect, damaged body that belonged to him, no one but him, Ron suddenly remembered the terrible truth. When the clenching hot channel pulled a glorious, overwhelming climax out of him, making him plunge his hips forward brutally one last time, spilling his defeat and his love, the unstoppable roar that came with it was filled with raw despair.

“Draco...!!! Fuck... please... no...” it ended on a whimpered and he found himself collapsed on top of the beautiful, pliant, warm body of the blond god he worshipped, trying his hardest not to start crying his fucking eyes out once again. It was all he seemed to bloody do these days, crying, unable to do anything about it. He’s never felt so morose and depressed in his life and the very thought of losing this, letting this wonderful thing between them fade away, was unimaginable and it hurt to even think about it. He couldn’t imagine his life without his blond lover, the man he was bonded to and he couldn’t even begin to contemplate all the little things he would miss with life splitting them apart so cruelly.

The leisurely, long breakfasts in the sunlit parlour of the Bellevue estate, sparkled with the morning chatter and laughter, exchange of news and vague plans of their day; the unexpected moments when they would find themselves alone and would seek each other out immediately as if they had something to prove; the evenings, always tinged with melancholy that Ron would once again be leaving – and the few delightful ones, filled to the brim with bubbling happiness when they knew he got to stay for the night– every bit of it, all of it, the happy life they had made by each other’s side - he would miss it terribly. And he knew he would give it all up in a heartbeat if he only got to keep him; if he somehow, miraculously, got a chance to stay by Draco’s side, regardless of their circumstances, however miserable they may turn out be. But this was the one thing that could not be helped.

There was not a shred of doubt in Ron’s mind that Harry would do everything in his power to separate them and keep them apart. And he was out of excuses for Harry not to do so. He knew he would beg if it would make any difference, but he also knew it would be in vain – Harry sensed the danger breathing out of Draco Malfoy’s closeness to his best mate and Ron knew that Harry would not hesitate to shield their relationship from it. Should Ron even attempt it, there would be cutting, baring questions to answer and truths pouring out that would mortify Harry, belittle his feelings and unyielding devotion to Ron and taint the image of their love he held in such high regard and had such high hopes for. And Ron didn’t have it in him to make him miserable; he’d rather be miserable and torn himself.

He kept on telling himself stubbornly that it was his own fault that he was in this mess and that Harry was not to blame; Harry was good and faithful to him and his only crime was that he loved Ron too much for his own good - so Harry shouldn’t be the one to pay the price of Ron having such a fickle, treacherous heart. His only regret was that he had dragged Draco into it – but that was not really what it was either, because Draco went willingly. And that’s why Ron had picked Harry’s happiness over his own: Harry had not chosen this and it would be beyond cruel to annihilate all his dreams of a life with Ron in the very moment he was hoping to make them true. Draco and himself... they knew what they were doing, they knew what the risks were and they gave into it, into this forbidden, aching love between them, greedily grabbing a chance for a few mindless years of happiness, all the while fully aware that it would one day come to an end.

And now the feared end was at the doorstep of their life together and the thought of parting made Ron sick with misery and heart-numbing sadness. If only there was a way to keep him... to keep seeing him, to keep meeting him, to keep him in his life. If only... but he couldn’t see it.

And yet he knew no other way. He would always love Draco Malfoy, there was no doubt in his heart to whom it belonged to, not anymore there wasn’t. But if he chose him, trampled over Harry’s feelings to save his heart, he knew he would never be whole again. He’s hurt Harry before and he knew how he felt on the inside when he did – like his entire world was off, strangely tilted to the side and just plain... wrong. He didn’t have it in him to deliberately cause Harry more pain, misery and loss that he was already forced to bear in his turbulent life. If the price to pay to see Harry happy was Ron’s heart, so be it, he had passed that decision long ago.

Yet, when Ron lay in the arms of his spent, devoted lover, himself feeling exhausted, boneless and more in love with his silver-eyed miracle than ever before, he couldn’t help but wonder if he would survive the ordeal and for how long. Surely his heart had to break under all that boiling, charged love it was filled with - and which he would no longer have anyone to give to. Because – Harry... he loved Harry, surely he did; he loved him enough to sleep with him, for fuck's sake – but Harry did not inspire those all-encompassing feelings of torturous longing and blissful belonging, of hungry need and absolute completion Ron felt when he was immersed into Draco Malfoy. It was as if somehow Draco was a perfect fit for the inside of his embrace, for the crook of his neck to press his face in when he needed to hide from the world, for his large hands, for his heart... Everything just fell into place when they were together and now it was all going to be ravaged and ruined.

As if the blond had sensed his thoughts somehow, he moaned quietly in his exhaustion and rubbed his head at the side of his neck, as if he wanted to show him his gratitude for simply being there with no words spoken. Ron kissed the top of his head gently, bitterly aware how much he’s going to miss those indescribable, perfect moments of their intimacy, when Draco Malfoy melted in his arms like a warm, plush kitten. He loved this, he loved him. And Draco must have felt his misery, because without as much as a warning the words spilled out of him hastily as if he could no longer keep them inside:

“You can't leave me... you can't. I won't let you. There's got to be a way... You need to tell him, explain... Ron, please...”

When he saw the redhead immediately shake his head, repeatedly, adamantly, as if this was not even a remote option, he added feverishly:

“You've got to do something... please, love. I can't lose this, we can't... I swear I'll lose my marbles without seeing you for any length of time... five days and I was already going crazy. You can't want this less than I, I know you can't, I can feel your despair and your yearning from a distance. There's got to be a way for us, tell me, you'll find a way, I need this... I need you...”

He sought out his mouth as if he tried to make his point another way, the one way that really counted between them; his fresh, sweet lips mauling Ron's determination to bits and pieces, his addictive tongue licking at his resolve, melting it into nothing until the redhead moaned his surrender quietly and whispered between two kisses, that left them both without any breath and any sane thought to spare:

“Merlin, Draco... stop hurting me, love... as if I could leave you behind... as if I could... you know I can't imagine losing you either... I love you, gorgeous. I love every bit of you... your perfect, unblemished skin, all mine to ruin and to mark for my own... I love the way you arch your tender, aristocratic neck backwards with absolute trust to grant me access... let me feel the life in you bursting under my tongue... let me try to capture your heartbeat with my lips... I love the fucking addictive sounds you make, those mewling one that go straight to my cock and make me eat out of your hand, you beautiful bastard... you know I'd cheat and lie and take long-distance port-keys just to hear you whimper my name in need... and blurt out all that filth you say to turn me on... Because you know very well I can get hard in two seconds flat watching you turn into this... this utterly debauched... lust-crazed beast that can't get enough and begs for it...

I love you, your perfect body, that soft blond hair that crawls in my sleep and smells like a bloody aphrodisiac.... I'm in love with you, you gorgeous silver-eyed devil, with those fucking endless legs you wrap around me when you want your brains fucked out, with that hard perfect cock you let me suck until you melt on my tongue, your begging mouth, licking my sanity out, your wonderful fingers working me into a mess, the way you fall apart underneath me... everything. Every little thing that you are. And most above I love your heart.

Your wonderfully brave... wonderfully stubborn heart that wouldn't fucking give up on me until I surrendered my stupid pride and prejudice and fell in love with you myself... I love your heart best of all, my prince. I don't... I don't even have the words to tell you how much you make me want you for myself... how much I adore every moment I get to spend with you... how much I don't want to let you go...

It'll fucking tear me apart... I know it will... but I'll find us a way to be together... perhaps not every day, but I can't let you go completely... I'll cheat and lie and find some bloody pretence to keep finding you... I'll make long-distance apparitions and fly my arse sore just to see you in the morning, to wake you up and see your eyes lit up at the sight of me the way they always do. He’ll take me away, I know he will... but he can't keep us apart completely, not even he can't... because... because I can't fucking live without you, Draco Malfoy. You took over my heart and enchanted it completely and now I'm yours... bonded to you... your life-mate... your chosen one... in love... and I don't want to let you go... not now, not ever... I'll find my way back to you, again and again I will... until the gods get the message and let us stay together.”

“Yes... together... need to... love you...” were all the broken words that made it out of Draco’s mouth, swollen with hard, abandoned kissing because - he might have to leave on scraps of this stubborn, invincible love for god knows how much time, but Ron gave him a promise; he wanted this, them, as much as Draco did, and that alone was enough for the blond to let himself loose.

“Fuck me,” he whispered into his mouth feverishly. “Make love to me. Perhaps it’s our last for some time to come. And I want you to let go off yourself. Mark me, take me, fuck me, love me... I want that beast that belongs to me out here, Ron, making me not being able to walk in the morning... and I don’t care if _he_ comes through this door this minute himself – I’m staying the night, because it’s my night, our night, our last one, and I need to feel you, the echo of you for all the lonely days without you. I need to remember you like this, my fiery blue-eyed angel, and I need to make sure you remember me, I can't lose you, I won't - ”

It took everything he was for Draco not to spill his heart out. Ron may have made his decision, but there were two people in that cursed relationship that stood in the way of his heart and though he couldn't bring himself to go against Ron, Draco wasn't done with Potter yet. He would go to the King Cross station and get Potter's answer, he would play every last card he still had. He couldn't fucking die of love, could he, now!? No, he was a Malfoy and he would fight for the man he came to adore with all the determination and poison left in him.

Ron's lips travelled down his body and it felt every bit life heaven feeling him spilling his love with that talented mouth of his; nibbling his rosy taut nipples erect, sucking on his hipbones, because he knew how crazy that made him, licking all around his begging, swollen cock, laving his balls with that warm, inviting tongue that made Draco's shaft hurt with want and held back juices. Only when he was nearly whimpering in need, did that large mouth take pity on him and engulfed him whole; the naked, leaking head of his cock hitting the back of Ron's throat, and he very nearly blew his load at the first surge down that sloppy, wanton mouth, because... oh, sweet Merlin, because his man could do this, he could suck cock like a world-class whore and Draco couldn't think, couldn't talk, couldn't do anything but yelp broken words of filth and love as he slammed his hips forward at a heart-stopping pace and the tight, hot cave sucked him in, deeper and deeper. So close... he was so close...

And then the large hands took possession of his arse, massaging the round buns with skilled fingers, building up impossible tension, closing in on his stretched, wet hole and Draco just knew the precise moment when he was going to lose it, because Ron could do that, too... he could do that to him... merely scrape his fingers at his opening gently and _look_ at him, let those brilliant blue orbs catch his own grey eyes as in dare – and as surely as if the redhead had ordered his surrender, Draco just exploded with a wanton shout and showered him in his come, helpless like a blushing teenager. Merlin, Ron... his Ron, his lover, his other-half, his bonded one... still suckling gently, with care, at the last remains of the pearly come as if he didn't want to leave a single precious drop behind, then sliding up his body to let him have a taste straight off his mouth and when their lips joined once again, Draco was surprised at the sudden, painful surge of love and possessiveness he felt for his man.

He inhaled his scent like an addict, the gentlest touch of his lips was intoxicating, pulling him closer, deeper and he tasted him eagerly as if he was a thirsty man offered the cleanest, freshest water and the bitter-sweet tinge of the inside of his mouth made his head spin with want. Sweet god, he would surely perish should he be forced to endure without him! He's got to make Potter come to his senses, he's got to! Potter is a plain idiot if he thinks he can keep him away from Ron – he may be able to take him away, but there was nothing preventing Draco following them around wherever they went. He didn't want to argue with Ron over his decision any longer - little good it did him whenever he had tried! - so he would not share any of his plans, however far-fetched ones, with his lover. He simply knew he had to try; drive Potter crazy, if he had to, make sure Ron never forgets whom he belonged to, make sure he still gets his urgently needed dose of his presence, if only by looking at him from afar. There was a time before their bonding- right now it seemed a million years ago - when he had to endure just that, when watching Ron from afar had been the only thing left for him to do.

But against all odds, he had managed to change that and after all these years he still couldn’t believe the miracle that was Ron, lying quietly by his side, playing with his hair and cupping his face for another kiss of love and devotion, the blond eagerly returned. As rational as Draco always was, he quietly believed their love, the unlikely bond between them, was made in Heaven; they were meant to be together. How else would they have faced and overcome so many obstacles that kept them apart from the very beginning – the social status, the centuries-long family hatred, the prejudice, the pride, other loves – everything was against them, and yet they conquered it all and Draco chose to find hope in this.

He’ll find a way, they will. He won’t think of the dreadful separation they were facing, he won’t look back at his actions and drive himself crazy with thoughts what could he have done differently so it wouldn’t have come to that. No, he would live for the moment, savour his last few hours of heaven in Ron’s embrace, go to that train station and get Potter’s answer – and take it from there. He wasn’t giving up, he wasn’t done yet. He had to believe that, he had to, or he would drown in his own misery and despair at the thought that it was only hours before he would lose him, for Merlin knows how long, and the dull, aching pain that spread across his chest like toxic fluid was unbearable without some hope he clung to with all his might, to the very end and beyond.

They had made love twice more, each time more desperately inhaling each other’s presence, before the stars began to fade and they were a mere day apart from the moment that would cut so brutally into their precious bond of love and old magic. As the first gentle fingers of raising dawn coloured the skies rosy, they brought along a bitter realization that they finally out of time - the big white owl, Harry's messenger, landed softly on the windowsill and when it rapped impatiently with its sharp beak against the glass to be allowed access, the sound echoed ominously around the quiet room where two lovers lay still in a fragile shelter of each other's arms as if hoping to hide from a storm.

With a sigh, Ron finally got up and let the bird in, earning himself a painful peck on the finger by a majestic animal and when it deposited a roll of parchment into his hand, it hoofed indignantly and took off without even bothering asking for a treat. The redhead's fingers shook so badly when he tried to open it, they nearly tore the whole thing in two, but once he managed to open it, it was no less and no more he was expecting to get. He collapsed back onto his bed next to Draco, buried his face into the palm of his hands and told him in a dead tired, numb voice:

“He hopes to see me at the King's Cross. He says we'll take it from there.”

And Draco's heart just sunk at these words. He shouldn't even bother, then. Potter had clearly already made up his mind. But at the same time a strange kind of defiance rose inside of him: after all he had said, opened his heart up to the bastard, risking to get hurt - and still he would not even give his plea a day's consideration... it pissed him off beyond belief. He would go there, he wanted to look into Potter's eyes when he says the words of rejection and he wanted to be able to show him his contempt at treating Ron as if he was still his faithful side-kick, his to dispose of at his will.

Warm mouth touched his neck gently and as his beloved redhead whispered _“Stay... just a little longer”_ into his ear, Draco sighed deeply and closed his eyes, surrendering his guns already. For as much as he tried, he couldn't be angry with Ron, not for any length of time, not ever, not even now. Ron needed this, he needed to do this to stay whole, and in some deep, emotional level the blond understood his bonded one. Loving Potter was a part of Ron as much as his freckles were and it was this Ron, the one that could not bear to let his best friend down, that Draco fell in love with. As infuriating as it was, Draco knew if he managed to persuade him to let go of Harry, he would lose him for certain. He would not be able to face the regret he'd see in those beloved blue eyes if Ron was the one to let go.

No, Draco's only hope only ever lay in persuading Potter to allow them a chance to keep seeing each other – and now that was gone as well. Fucking arrogant bastard, if only he knew how much Ron loved him, if only Draco could tell him... or show him, gods, if he could show him! But he couldn't even tell Ron he went to see him; the redhead would be horrified and when his temper rose, he would surely shout at him to stop playing dirty and for fuck's sake, to stay off his old Slytherin ways of getting what he wanted so unscrupulously, and behind his back, of all things. He knew his lover by now well enough to script his exact words and - no, revealing their relationship without Ron's consent would ruin every last chance he had of keeping him. Bloody hell, he _hated_ being so without options!

He knew he could use a few hours of sleep, he should really take some time to think, to see if there was something he had missed, some way not to walk down that platform tomorrow and feel his heart crumble in his chest as he watched Ron turn away from him – but the very thought that he would be losing him made him abandon all sanity and sent him down the least productive and rational way. He simply couldn't, wouldn't resist, and he let Ron seduce him again. He needed this more, he told himself desperately when his bruised, tired body responded to every silken touch, to every word of need and love as if it was their first time. He needed to drown in his arms, he needed to surrender to that warm mouth, showering him in loving kisses, he needed to touch and feel and have Ron Weasley, as this might be his very last chance, if the fate was planning to be exceptionally cruel. For a few more hours they had together, he had to forget there was any world outside of his embrace. He knew he'd have to live of these last desperate moments for an uncertain amount of time and Ron's sobbed, stuttered confession _“I love you, Draco. Please forgive me...”_ broke what was left of his heart.

The redhead was finally sleeping, dead out and exhausted and with his pale cheeks still showing the traces of tears that managed to break through his resolve after all, he was so painfully, decadently beautiful, that it seem to tear something out of Draco when he finally managed to get up. But he had to, he could not bear to say goodbye to Ron looking into those brilliant blue eyes, glowing softly with all the love Ron had for him and knowing that it might be a long time before he saw them again. He peppered the beloved silken red hair with a million tiny kisses to say a quiet goodbye, earning himself a broken sigh and a grunt and he sat on the edge of the bed so weak with sadness, eating him like acid on the inside, that he didn't even manage to disapparate. It hurt his very core that he had to leave, it was just so very  _wrong_... but that was Ron for you. Loving him was never easy and it didn't get any easier with years and with their love running deeper with passing time. He'd just have to trust his luck that there was still a bit of happiness written in their fate.

When his resolve finally won over his heavy heart and he managed to disapparate to his home, the first feeling that overwhelmed him when his opened his eyes in his private quarters was that of incredible loneliness and abandonment. What was he supposed to do without Ron in his life? How was he supposed to make it through all the endless, meaningless days without the quiet, restless expectation of seeing him again, without his brilliant smile and that rumbling warm laughter that filled up his home with joy and magic and brought the very air in it to life. All his strength left him and he barely managed to take a few stumbling steps towards the big comfortable sofa that occasionally served as his bed. He would collapse there and hope for the merciful sleep to come to offer him oblivion from his suffocating misery.

But he couldn't. Because someone was already there. At the sight of the long, glossy red hair, his breath almost stopped in his chest and when the man sitting in his private bedroom looked up, the eyes were of the most brilliant blue and even when he recognised him, he had to tell his stupid, shocked brain several times it was not him, it was not his Ron waiting for him in his home, it was his son, it was Hugo, so very much alike his worshipped father, that he seemed to a shaken up blond as if the ghost from the past came to haunt him.

And he looked like a ghost indeed. His face was so pale the freckles seemed to have disappeared and his eyes shone like blue torches from the nearly transparent background. But what finally grounded Draco and seemed to pour some strength back into his limp limbs, was the sight of blood. There was no small amount of it caking his shoulder and as he was clutching his arm close, there was more trickling between his fingers. The blue eyes were desperate and his pretty mouth trembling in pain.

“Sor-ry for... the mess, Mr. Mal-foy,” he stuttered. “But I had... no-where else... to go.”

“Merlin, Hugo...” For a long panicked moment Draco was speechless. There was Ron's child, the one he saw only a few hours ago in perfect health, in his bedroom, bleeding profusely and his tired mind just went blank in the bizarre, impossible situation. But when a barely kept back whimper of pain came out of Hugo's mouth, the sudden spark in Draco's brain triggered a flood of words and deeds directed at the young man, who sought shelter with him. He practically launched himself at him to help him.

“Holy cr... well, blast, child, what happened?! Oh, never mind that now, come, we need to get you to St. Mungo's promptly, this looks bad indeed!”

“No... St. Mungo's... don't... want to go... too... many... questions,” the young man somehow squeezed through his clenched teeth and Draco remembered, yeah, this was Hugo Weasley – Weasley being the operative word here – and besides Hugo belonging to the most stubborn wizarding breed in England – he also carried a famous surname and his visit at the hospital, bloodied and in company of Draco Malfoy - the controversial employer of his father, how very scandalous! - was not going to escape public attention. Someone was bound to open their mouth to the press and the least they needed now, was a bucket of rotten publicity.

“No St. Mungo's then,” he quickly promised to the deathly-pale young man, whose face betrayed he was nearly beginning to panic and he was rewarded with his mouth relaxing into a small, pain-stricken grimace that was supposed to count for a smile.

“Thank... you,” the redhead barely managed. “I don't... suppose... you could... help? Ple-ase...” he looked at his father's lover pleadingly and Draco, nearly stunned with the blue gaze, thought that, fuck it, Dolores fucking Umbridge would probably cave in at the sight of those exquisite blue eyes, asking for help.

“Well, I will most certainly try,” he tried to tell him as calmly and gently as he could muster, but the amount of blood on Hugo's arm sent his heart in a frenzy and made him nearly sick in his stomach. Ever since that blasted, brutal war he had... issues... tolerating the sight of blood and – oh, Merlin help him! - the sickening, sweetly smell it brought along. But this was Ron's son and if he could not of deal with his weakness for him, he could never again look his lover in the eye.

“Just... you wait here and do not dare move!” he ordered sternly and rushed towards the cabinet where he kept a small supply of dittany ever since he had settled in these quarters. They sometimes got a bit too... enthusiastic with Ron and it always made him feel better to know that he had a bottle of the miraculous essence of a healing plant at his reach, thought they never had to use it so far. Right now he hoped with all his heart it hadn't gone bad or something similarly terrible; the very thought was... unacceptable.

He went on to remove the torn fabric and he had to call in all of his proverbial Malfoy composure to hold back a gasp at the sight. There was a fair chunk of Hugo's muscles simply missing from the shoulder and it was clear that the nasty, bloody gash, producing all that unstoppable blood was magical in origin. As he began applying the Essence of dittany to the edges of the wound, he tried to breathe as little as he could not to feel faint watching the injury. When he saw the jagged edges of the wound slowly beginning to heal and close visibly when they came in touch with the liquid he finally exhaled a quiet, shaky sound of relief. As he continued to apply the healing potion to his arms, the pretty freckled face of his visitor gradually relaxed in obvious alleviation of pain.

“Thank you,” the redhead spoke quietly, his voice less tense and the words unbroken. Draco was quiet while he was wrapping the wound, unsure of how much of this bloody affair he even wanted to know, but the very thought that Hugo sought him out – him and not any member of his extensive family – was intriguing and he decided it was in his best interest to find out more.

“You're welcome, young man,” he finally said when he was done and looked into the solemn, pale face, so much alike a younger version of Ron, with a serious expression. “You're Ron's son, it's the least I could do.”

Curiously enough, Draco noticed a flash of pain at the bottom of those mesmerising eyes at these words and the pretty mouth pressed together as if the redhead barely held back his resentment. How very intriguing indeed...

But when there was no actual reply, Draco continued in a calm, measured voice of a concerned adult:

“I would, however, appreciate to know more of what had happened that had you land here... and not in the home of one of your family members. You must understand – a Weasley, a Malfoy and a lot of blood is usually not something that's easily explained,” he said as lightly as he could, only half jesting.

Hugo closed his eyes and exhaled, clearly accepting that he had no other choice – after all, the boy was brilliant, he had to know that it was going to come to this and Draco was hoping he was smart enough not to attempt to lie to him.

“I splinched,” he finally said quietly and his usually so warm voice was uncommonly heavy. Draco raised an eyebrow – that was beyond unusual. As any proud father, Ron was exceptionally chatty when it came to the achievements of his offspring, so Draco was well aware that unlike his father, Hugo had passed his very first apparition licence test with flying colours and something indeed extraordinary must have happened for him to obtain such a serious injury.

“I was distraught...” the young man continued in response to quiet Draco's provocation to say more. “I was... I went to see Harry when I left you with my dad. I... my dad and I talked and he told me... everything.”

He looked Draco straight in the eye and the blond could feel himself grow rigid. This could get very ugly, very soon. Hugo was Harry's man, everybody knew that and if he interfered... Draco dropped his weight onto a sofa near the young man, no longer sure that his legs were going to support him for much longer.

“Your son Scorpius... he saw you two kissing,” Hugo continued, looking decidedly uncomfortable, but so uncommonly determined, that for all his Weasley looks he reminded Draco of his mother, Hermione Granger, on a mission. “He mentioned to Albus that you looked nearly as if you were feeding on each other and how very miserable you both were when you had to let go. So I knew,” the redhead said simply and his astute blue eyes did not look malicious, only sad.

"Bloody kids," Draco murmured in annoyance, but there was nothing for it now; they should have taken better precautions, they should have been more discrete, but they were so bloody desperate and so very out of time....

“And I made my dad tell me," Hugo continued quietly. "Merlin knows he was in a right state when I found him; it was obvious something was eating him on the inside and it seemed imperative that he talked to someone. So I made him spill out... and once he did, I knew something had to be done. But you know how dad is,” he looked at Draco with a small, bitter smile and shrugged. “He'd rather sign up for life in Azkaban than disappoint Harry and it was clear he wasn't going to do anything. So I decided I'd give it a go,” he confessed, his voice barely audible, but the misery in it was suddenly so very obvious that Draco's last hope of Potter's favourite nephew intervening, died quietly at the sight.

“I went to talk to Harry to see if I could change his mind,” the redhead continued, forcing his voice to sound impassive. “Only... I fucked up majorly... He told me directly not to ask it of him to leave dad behind – and I just kind of lost it and blurted out that I loved him. Yeah, I know... Don't give me that look, don't you think I've had my fair portion of it already!? I'm bloody dead on the inside because of that same bloody look he gave me! And then he told me not to say another word, so... I left and as wretched as I was, I splinched.”

Draco's breath stopped in his lungs at the sight of the young man, Ron's son, burying his face into the palms of his hands as if he hoped to hide his sorrow and his despair from the world. Painful compassion he didn't even know he was capable of, flooded the Slytherin's chest on a whim. Oh, for fuck's sake... how could it be, that they were all so miserable?! This wonderful young man, gorgeous and brilliant, with the world at his feet, fell in love with the one person he could not have and Draco could see the very weight of his heavy heart pull him under. Without a thought he hugged him around the shoulders, carefully, not to reopen the wound he barely managed to close, and whispered soothingly into his ear:

“Shhh... you survived, didn't you? You're here, you survived and it's all that matters. We're Slytherins, we never give up, we just wait for another chance. Just look at me... if your dad told you everything, then you must know... it took me years to get him, long years filled with jealousy and terrible longing – but in the end I did and he was so bloody worth all the wait and the suffering he put me through. And you... you're so brave and wonderful, only a fool would throw away a heart you have to offer. You'll get there, never despair! If it is meant for you, you will. And I wish to thank you; thank you for trying to help, whatever the result.”

He kissed his hair lightly, experiencing a painful surge at the sense memory of it smelling and looking so familiar - and was startled to suddenly find himself staring into those eyes of blue brilliance as Hugo Weasley lifted his head and blurted out passionately in a voice that was heavy with unshed tears:

“What does he have, that I don't have?! I can ask you, you _must_ know! We look alike, we act alike, I can't even bloody splinch without splinching on the same place he once did! And yet he gets to have it all - and there's nothing left for me, nothing that matters anyway! I'm never just Hugo, I'm worthless as _just Hugo_ , I'm his son, that's all I ever am, it's my greatest fucking achievement! That's the only way Harry ever cared about me, as his son and he... he hates me now; he hates me for trying to interfere, trying to stand between him and the man he loves and offering my worthless self instead. I know I shouldn't have said it... it was beyond stupid and at a terrible moment... but I had to, I had to let him know, this fucking love I have to live with just slammed out of me... so bloody uncalled for. And, Merlin, the way he looked at me... as if he couldn't even understand the language I spoke in when I told him that I loved him... and that if he ever needed someone to love him the way he came, no questions asked, with no payback required, I'm his man.Yeah, I went all the way, poured my fucking stupid, overbearing heart out to him... and _you should have seen that.fucking.look...!_ Is it really so incomprehensible that I should love him?! Well, I can't bloody help myself, can I!?” he finally shouted and his voice broke when Draco pushed his fiery head into the crook of his neck and let his despair spill down his shoulder. 

Merlin, this was just... he couldn't even begin to untangle the mess they've all found themselves in and he suddenly realized that he let his own misery fade into the background when he held another human being so in need of his comfort nearby. Hugo looked so bloody vulnerable and so very young, sobbing his heart out into the warmth of their embrace that Draco felt a fresh surge of acid hatred towards the man who made them both so miserable. Bloody fucking Potter! It was all his fault! A blind and deaf man could have guessed that Hugo Weasley had it bad for him, yet Potter managed to miss it entirely, the blind git that he was; and to top it all, the petty little self-absorbed wanker allowed himself to let this beautiful boy down in a rough, vile way no one deserved; shattering the wonderful heart he was offered to bits. The arrogant bastard! Some Saviour indeed! But he realized it was not what Hugo needed to hear and he barely managed to swallow an angry tirade at the tip of his tongue. He would have to try harder.

“He... your father... he doesn't have anything that you don't have as well,” the blond spoke finally, as gently as he could. “If anything, you're smarter, kinder and far more mature than he ever was – and just as loving and just as worthy of being loved. So nothing about you makes you worth less and one day someone very special will make you understand that.

It's just that – Potter... your uncle Harry and I, we shared nearly our entire lives with each other and it is that experience that set the course of our destinies and our hearts. Your father and I were pulled together by our very first kiss, something that haunted me forever, and your uncle Harry was your father's first love. Still - he had no right to reject you the way he did, even if he doesn't feel the same way about you; he should have let you down much more gently... but perhaps...” - he couldn't believe what he was about to say - “... perhaps it was a bit much to throw in his face all at once, the knowledge of our relationship and the love of someone he's used to seeing as a child he used to lull to sleep.

I know you adore him, Hugo, but he's only human – and he always was a blind git! Your dad was the first person that ever returned his feelings and you know they don't come more starved of love than Harry Potter does, not with the way he was raised. Your father understands that and it is that why he's putting our love through this... not to shatter Harry to bits as he very well could... but to give him that unfailing affection he's been chasing all his life. And as hard as it is for me, this is why I love him even more. Because he doesn't have it in him to hurt someone to be happy, because he could never be happy if he did. And that's what makes Ron Weasley special to me. And you're special the same way... perhaps your time has not come yet, but if you don't allow yourself to give up, it will. Just look at me, child, and trust me when I say so: it will.”

“I suppose.... I know all that,” Hugo whispered tiredly into his shirt. “But it still hurts.”

“It hurts me as well," Draco admitted openly and the sudden knot in his throat didn't allow him to elaborate much. "It hurts me beyond words,” he added quietly, but he realized that somehow, wrapped around the one person that could understood his pain, it hurt just a little less.

“Will you come with me to the King's Cross tomorrow?” he suddenly asked him on a whim, not knowing why, not knowing what difference could it make. “Potter owes me an answer... I wanted him to take some time to consider whether he would give me a chance to keep seeing your dad... and even though now we both know what it is going to be, I want to look into his eyes when he says it, I want to tell him that it's wrong and to hell what your father thinks of it! And Merlin knows I want to see him, I want to see Ron one last time, before...” his voice died abruptly, because he couldn't bear to take his mind in that direction.

“I will come,” Hugo said quietly. “I decided to take up Viktor Krum on his offer and leave for Bulgaria – it's not like I can train with the Cannons in this state - ” he pointed at his limp, bandaged shoulder with obvious disappointment in his voice, “- and it's not like I have something to stay around for,” he whispered bitterly, without really bothering to conceal the sadness. “Too many memories. Dad would be leaving with Harry and I want to say goodbye and I...”

But he wasn't able to continue either.

“You want to see Harry one last time as well,” Draco finished his sentence gently and held him just a little tighter. “We'll go together, then. It's not like anyone can keep us away, can they?”

~

“Get away from him!!!”

The last time Draco saw Potter with this same expression on his face, the most powerful dark wizard alive had perished without a body left behind and now the very same hand that annihilated him, was pointing straight at Draco's heart. And his expression was beyond murderous. 


	58. Do you dream of me?

 

 _“I hold you in my arms_  
_Dimmed by scarlet morning red_  
_I whisper in you ear_  
_Do you dream of me?”_

Tiamat, Do you dream of me?

 

 _“Get.The fuck.Away from him!!”_ Potter growled once more through the clenched teeth and Draco, frozen by the unexpected, instant hostility, slowly let go of Hugo's cold hand. He had thought it best to side-apparate him, given his condition, and as soon as they appeared on the Platform 9 3/4, the blond's first thought was to Hugo's well being. He had checked his wound and sighed dejectedly at the small spot of fresh blood making an appearance at the surface of the wrapping – this was one stubborn injury that was not going to be fixed lightly, but there was nothing for it now, it would have to wait.

He looked around anxiously to see just how much attention they attracted, but much to his surprise, this part of the platforms seemed abandoned for a stretch of several yards to each side and it downed of him that he – well, they, as it was - was expected and someone had made appropriate magical preparations. Though the platform was literally swarming with people behind the invisible barrier, yet he could not hear any noises coming from there and the magical bubble they’ve found themselves in, was eerily silent.

Normally he would have been one of the people rushing about the platform, if a certain Quidditch prodigy James Sirius Potter was not invited to spend a year as an exchange student at Beauxbatons and after a few days of depressed sulking about by his smitten son, Astoria delightedly announced the news that there was a sudden and quite unexpected opening for two more students and – surprise, surprise – Scorpius and Albus Potter were the two lucky chaps receiving the invitations. She was leaving as well; after all, the boys deserved to have a home away from home, since they were not even allowed to apparate on their own yet, and after witnessing Scorpius going quite mental with happiness and not being able to shut up about all the joys of freedom abroad, Draco conveniently and politely “forgot” to ask how much the _“unexpected opening”_ was going to cost them, because, frankly, this was his wife's way to say goodbye and his freedom didn't have a price. Astoria was finally ready to leave, it seemed; it was over between them and they both knew it. This separation was just to soften the blow, mostly to both sets of their parents, and he expected to receive the paperwork later in the year. If she would bother. It didn't matter to him one way or the other, he had no one to give his freedom to anymore, not with the way things were going with Ron, he thought bitterly.

But then Hugo moaned quietly and it forcefully pulled him out of his depressing thoughts and when the redhead swayed on unsure feet, Draco remembered much too late that the silly boy had been waiting for him to come home the entire night, losing Merlin knows how much blood in the process and of course he bloody well wasn’t alright! In this view, another apparition had been a terrible idea and – Salazaar’s frilly underpants, Ron’s going to have his balls for breakfast if his beloved child gets hurt just because he couldn't bare too part with him without at least an attempt at intervention, however lame.

“Are you alright?” the blond asked worriedly. “I could get out of here, you know... make sure you get some rest...”

“I’m bloody brilliant,” Hugo replied through clenched teeth. “Never better. It’s just this stupid apparition... one has to squeeze through and it bloody hurt...  But I’ll be alright, honestly. Not going anywhere,” he added stubbornly and Draco could merely sigh in the face of such obstinacy. Honestly, Weasleys and their pig-headedness...

He went on to hold Hugo by one arm to keep him stable while he pointed his wand at the wound to perform an _Impervius_ charm, to at least isolate it from the outside influences. He went on to mutter another spell to alleviate the pain the redhead must have been feeling - but that was as far as he got before Potter's howl nearly made him jump out of his skin.

Potter was approaching fast, with a wand in the outstretched hand, looking positive livid and Draco tried to imagine how the situation appeared from his perspective... and he had to admit it didn't look too favourable for him... nope, none too favourable at all. Hugo was bleeding and the blond was holding onto him – which might be interpreted as trying to keep him captive by someone as paranoid as Potter was – and the final straw must have been his wand pointing at Hugo's injured arm; yep, all in all, he had to give it to Potter – it did look vile and it once again made him seem like a villain.

Still, the reaction seemed a bit... extreme, especially for someone who, according to Hugo, was not supposed to care. As Draco let go of the redhead and slowly lifted his hands to demonstrate the lack of any vicious intention to the murderous-looking wizarding prodigy with a penchant for jumping to wrong conclusions, he took a good long look at the uncommonly dishevelled-looking man for clues, to see if he could discern what this... this _holy wrath_ was all about.

But Potter's eyes were no longer on him. He had either seen the error of his ways or estimated that Draco was no longer a threat, because those legendary green orbs were now fully focused on Hugo, glowing like two green candles, making him look tense and nervous and – strangely - almost hungry as if Harry Potter was eager to communicate something unspeakable to the young man, who just stood there, pale as a corpse, looking lost, embarrassed and utterly mortified. Draco didn't get anywhere with trying to figure out what was going on; in fact, he couldn't even make it past the expression on Potter's face – there was a curious mixture of anxiety, distress, worry and relief written all over those features he had known since he was a boy and he could honestly say Potter never looked more wretched and edgy.

When Hugo hesitated to move, the raven-haired man impatiently stretched out his arm towards the redhead as if he couldn't wait to have him close.

“Come here... are you alright?!” he said hastily. “Did he hurt you? I'll bloody _murder_ him if he's as much as laid a finger on you!” he hissed and indeed glanced towards the blond furiously as if merely waiting for the tiniest excuse.

Hugo just shook his head tiredly and finally seemed to muster enough strength to move towards his uncle.

“It's nothing... It wasn't him,” he finally said quietly. “He only tried to help. I splinched. Badly. After... you know,” he shrugged, trying to look impassive, but the quick glance he paid Harry was anything but – it was wistful and full of unspeakable sadness and pain. But as if he couldn't stand to look at him, at the person who hurt him so thoughtlessly, his brilliant blue eyes soon focused onto the ground and when he spoke next the bitterness was just under the surface:

“After that debacle I had nowhere else to go.”

“Merlin, Hugo...” Harry murmured, his voice heavy with regret, and before the redhead could as much as move a muscle, he unexpectedly pulled him into his embrace.

And it hurt Draco to the very core to see how the young man immediately melted into his chosen one; closing his eyes and hiding his head in the crook of his neck, barely holding back a sob, as if he was willing to sell what was left of his shattered pride for a few moments of sweet illusion in the arms of the man he came to love so desperately.

The Slytherin felt his own fists contract at the sight... if Potter even _attempted_ to hurt him again, he would personally make sure it was _not_   without consequences, not on his watch! Ron’s son was as precious as they came, he deserved far better than being treated ill by some pompous, self-absorbed idiot with a superiority complex, who was used to spinning people around at his will! Saviour or not, Draco wasn’t about to stand aside and see the redhead mistreated, regardless of how much the silly youth adored his tormentor!

But from where he was standing, it didn’t exactly look as if Potter was much inclined to hurt his nephew further, no, nope, quite the contrary... Blimey, if he really hated Hugo, the way the young man seemed to firmly believe, he was surely making a fine job of hiding it, Draco thought with awe. Because like this, holding the redhead across the back tightly, with those legendary green eyes closed as if he was savouring every moment of their embrace, Potter seemed relaxed, peaceful and strangely... in the right place. Draco got a curious sensation that Hugo had made a major error in judgement and more, that _his_ Weasley was not the _only_ oblivious Weasley of the lot.

“Well, I’ll be damned...” he murmured to himself, careful not to get caught. There was something there, between them, that he could not quite put his finger on, but those two... they seemed right together, even if one of them stubbornly denied it.

“I tried to find you,” the raven-haired man spoke in a rough voice that seemed to be holding back a rainbow of mixed feelings. “I swear I did... I’ve been looking for you like crazy for hours and I haven’t slept an minute since you left! The way we parted... I was worried sick. I sent owls to everyone I could think of... well, besides your dad, for obvious reasons... and I’ve even...”

He stopped, looking almost red-faced and Draco was shocked to hear Hugo give a broken chuckle, sounding every bit as if it was choked with tears.

“Harry, you're only meant to send a Howler when you’re really mad at someone. How was I supposed  to know?” he said quietly, but even Draco, who didn’t know the boy as well as he would like to, could tell how very tense he was underneath the pale, calm exterior. “I’ve seen your owls - the one that came with a Howler as well - but Mr. Malfoy was sleeping and I didn’t want to deal with all the commotion,” he sighed and when he finally lifted his head out of the crook of Potter’s neck, Draco could see his sheepish, smitten grin and the heart squeezed in his chest in pity because this obvious, undeniable love in his eyes, was headed for another disaster.

“I thought you only wanted to tell me to stay away from you and to stop meddling and I didn’t want to hear that. And well, when I saw that Howler, then... well, it seemed pretty clear you weren’t exactly happy with me.”

He shrugged, looking shy and very pretty in his boyish crush and Draco just stood there, thinking what an idiot Potter really was.

“I... no,” the green-eyed man said, sounding touched and embarrassed all in one. “I was worried. I wanted to know where you were, because...  I... we need to talk. I’d never want you to stay away,” he said awkwardly and strangely gently and swept the fingers across the redhead's cheek as if he was picking up on a lone teardrop. And the way the blue eyes lit up like stars at those words and that gesture, Draco was ready to punch Potter across the gob if this was not headed the way it rightfully should be and Potter was only giving the boy false hope with his poor choice of words and misleading body language.

“For Merlin’s sake, you two...” he murmured in despair, but as his luck would have it, this time he was heard.

Potter’s head shot up abruptly and he seemed to remember why he was even here. The darkened look he sent the blond across the distance between them nearly made Draco go for his wand.

“You!” he growled quietly, dangerously, in a way that made every single hair the Slytherin had on his head stand up. “I’m not done with you yet! How dare you?! Why didn’t you fire-call me? Call someone, tell someone _who matters_ that he was staying with you?! It would have been the right thing to do! Didn’t you think I was going to be worried sick, you Slytherin git?! Or were you trying to get into Ron’s good grace again by playing a rescuing hero once more?! Don’t you even _think_ I can’t see your game! It’s all about Ron for you; it’s all some complex, manipulative intrigue to win him over. Now, listen to me, you sick fuck: Ron was mine before he was yours and just the idea of you and him together... ”

“Harry? Are you... oh, here you are!” a confused voice called from the side and when Potter shut up abruptly, Draco, still half-dazed from the shock of Potter’s brutal, unexpected outburst of hostility realized with a sinking heart that he was out of time. Ron was here and he still didn’t get his answer.

The redhead looked worse for wear. His eyes were red-rimmed and strangely dull, and his hair was tousled as if he didn't bother combing it when he came from the shower - but to Draco he had never looked more beautiful, almost as if the air of tragic sadness that hung about him made him somehow irresistible to the blond. His heart sped up by the very sight of him, every heartbeat aching and resonating wildly inside his chest, and he held on to his composure as if to a shield, for it was the only thing that kept him from launching himself at his life-mate and ask him not to do this.

But the redhead hadn't noticed him yet, his eyes just caught on Hugo and he didn't even bother hiding his surprise:

“Hugh... What the...? What are you doing here?”

“He's here with me,” Harry said hastily and casually stepped in front of Hugo before Ron could notice the injured arm. “I asked him to come. That one, however...” he pointed at Draco with a sour, angry expression on his face. “That one invited himself!”

Draco could sense the exact moment when Ron's eyes found him and got all big and brilliant; it sent a shivering sensation down his body and Draco could see how very shocked he was, how very happy it made him just to see him – and how desperately he struggled to hide it and keep some semblance of control.

“Draco! I... oh, Merlin.... Draco...” he barely managed a whisper and he closed his eyes for a moment and exhaled slowly to stop his pale lips from trembling.

“Please...” he tried again, but barely anything came out.

“He's here, unwanted and uninvited,” Harry said harshly and Ron finally managed to forcefully pull his eyes off his beloved blond and tried to focus on his best mate. “But he's here because I gave him my word to consider... something... and give him my answer today. So...”

He unexpectedly took hold of Ron's hand, first one and then the other and turned him around to face him, to look him in the eye:

“Ron... Were you ever going to tell me, love?” he asked quietly, gently. “Were you ever going to ask?”

And Ron just stood there, ashen pale and his hands, caught in Harry's, trembled like leaves in the Autumn wind. Draco's heart broke at the sight of his devastation, he could feel his pain, misery and regret deeply inside of his own chest, because that's what being bonded meant – they shared everything. Finally Ron shook his head almost imperceptibly and when he spoke, his voice was tired and stifled as if he could barely make himself to form words.

“I wasn't going to ask,” he said quietly. “And I was only going to tell you if you asked me directly. I didn't want to cause you more pain. I never wanted to abandon you, to disappoint you, to betray you. Yet it happened. I don't even know how, it just... did. I keep on hurting you, Harry, and I didn't want to hurt you this one last time. I know what high hopes you had for us, so I'm ready... I'm ready to make you happy. If you want to have me... I will go.”

“Christ... Ron...”

The voice of the raven-haired wizard sounded as if it was full of held back tears and as they held hands, Draco noticed for the first time how palpable the connection between them was, how strong the bridge between the green and the blue eyes held and his heart sunk. Potter indeed owned Ron before he did, he knew him to the back of his head, he could make him do anything. Devoted. They were devoted to each other and Draco almost saw black at this recognition. He had lost and he had lost spectacularly.

“Ron...” Potter's voice sounded raw and heavy. “You've got to be the biggest, most stubborn fool ever born. Are you really ready to go through with this? For me? Abandon your bonded one, for me? Or die trying? Jesus, Ron...”

His words drowned inside the fierce, tight embrace Ron pulled him in and for a while it was all quiet as Ron just leaned down and kissed the top of Harry's head lovingly, with quiet, deadly determination of a man who had given into his fate.

“You should have known by now, there's nothing I wouldn't do for you,” he said gently and Draco noticed the pearls of tears hanging to the edges of his eyelashes. “I went to the fucking spiders-infested Forbidden forest for you, didn't I? You're just all that, Harry. Worthy of every love there is. I'd give my life for you, gladly. Because... yeah, this is... it. This is my life.”

For a long moment there was not a sound to be heard, as if the whole world went still and even their hearts slowed down to embrace the moment.

And then there was rustling of the fabric as Harry Potter removed his foggy glasses and wiped his wet face into Ron's shirt.

“So... this is it, then,” he said quietly, his voice trembling and his shoulders tensed.

“Malfoy!” he called unexpectedly and Draco's heart jumped to life in his chest and nearly suffocated him, when suddenly, the green eyes were on him.

“You heard Ron, Malfoy,” he said with a wild, raw voice. “Here's your answer. I win.”

And Draco only nodded, everything swimming in front of his eyes, with his heart beating wildly in his throat, but he couldn't utter a single word of reproach, he couldn't move to save his life. He needed to leave, badly; he needed to run away, lick his wounds, fall apart, whatever he could manage, but he couldn't even think of disapparating, the state he was in would have him splattered all over the English isles. And possibly, his legs didn't work. He was afraid to try.

“I win,” said Potter a bit more calmly, but strangely there was no gloating in his voice. “I love him more. I love him enough to let him go. So... I win,” he said stubbornly and was pulled to his knees by the weight of Ron, whose legs just gave in and he collapsed to his knees like an empty bag.

“Harry...” he said in a voice that was laden with unfathomable emotions; everything from regret, to incredulous awe, to sorrow, longing, bitter pain and impossible hope was packaged in that single word and his raven-haired best mate spoke the language of Ron's heart perfectly. He hugged him fiercely, still on his knees, and leaned his head onto Ron's shoulder.

And Draco just stood there, blood pounding in his ears like a battle-drum, his vision still unstable, but with crazy hope flowing through him like firestorm, and he wondered if he might have gone mad or did he really hear Potter say he was giving Ron up...?

“I was born with a single purpose, Ron,” the green-eyed wizard finally spoke and it was obvious from his torn, heavy voice how much his decision was costing him. “I'm a Saviour. I was born to save worlds, born to save lives... and what a misery of a Saviour would I make if I could not save the life of the one person that means the most to me?! Did you really think for a single moment that I would put my happiness ahead of yours, of your life even?! How could I? If we were going to be happy, we were going to be happy together... there is no happiness for me in the world where you're miserable, my love. So I'm giving you one last gift as your best friend, as your lover and as a man who was once your Chosen one: your freedom, Ron. Your freedom to follow your heart where it takes you... and I only ask in return to see you happy. Because I want to see you happy, Ron. It's all I ever wanted.”

“Oh, Harry... man... please... you're breaking my heart, mate...”

The redhead was now sobbing freely and the raven-haired held him even closer.

“Please, don't cry, love... this if fucking hard for me already. You have no idea how hard... but it would be unbearable if I could take you from the man you love, knowing that I could never make you happy. For my own stupid, selfish reasons. I could not live with myself. So – please... No regrets, no guilt, Ron. It was my decision, not yours. I let you go, you wouldn't have done it. I gave you your freedom, so you could enjoy it, not suffer in it. I want to see you so fucking happy it's ridiculous, Ron. I'm talking goofy happy, so happy that people are asking you what is that demented smile all about! Alright, love? Is that understood?! Because I'm not giving you up to misery, I want your absolute fucking joy as my payment! Oh, Ron...”

His word  died on the redhead's mouth and it was a proper kiss, a deep, beautiful, perfect kiss of someone saying goodbye.

“I had to...” Ron said quietly, when it had left Harry stunned, with eyes closed as if he was just revelling in the presence of his this last, luxury goodbye present. “I loved you forever and a part of me always will. So – I had to. One last time.  And I'll be happy for you, I swear I will. I'll only do happy things from now on and if anyone tries to make me miserable, I know my best mate's got my back... and he's a Saviour so don't fuck with him!”

His voice trembled in the end and Draco knew him well enough to know how hard this was for him as well. He was still unable to move, unsure if he needed to wake up first or was this really a world in which he got to have Ron...

“But what will you do now, Harry? We had all those plans and you already gave your notice at Hogwarts...” Ron sounded genuinely worried and when he added quietly: “I don't want you to get lonely...” - Harry Potter finally opened his eyes and gave a tired smile.

“Well, first of all, I plan to get up from my knees... Don't you go boasting around with this mighty Saviour of yours too much, you ginger fool, your Saviour is nothing but a worn out, ageing man, who can barely get up from his stiff knees these days, let alone take up some serious challenge... there you go... oh, man... finally... how come you're so much more springy than I am?! That's it! I'm seriously done with teaching... so done with it... makes it bloody hard to stay fit and I could do with some exercise! And since we're talking fitness and exercise...”

Harry's arm unexpectedly shot backwards and the fingers sought out Hugo's hand and it took the young redhead's breath away. Their fingers intertwined and the way Harry squeezed and held forcefully, the awed young man knew he needed all his strength and support to do this, to keep a casual, happy face for Ron, because he was Harry fucking Potter and he couldn't afford to crumble in front of his lover, the beloved man he had just given up in a most selfless gesture. That bit would come later and when Hugo locked his fingers with Harry's he wanted to tell him he would be there for him when it does and the impossible happiness that seemed so bloody outside of his reach only hour ago, seemed to spread up from their locked fingers all over his body like a warm, golden tide. Harry needed him. He would be there.

“Since we're talking exercise...” Harry picked up, where his thoughts wandered off and his legendary green eyes glanced in Hugo's direction for a second, “Your son here has presented me with an offer I can barely refuse. If he's to play for the Cannons next season – and I'm sure we can negotiate him a much better position than that of a reserve Keeper, that's just laughable for someone with his talent and set of skills! - then he could do with some personalized training and Merlin knows I could do with some flying! Viktor offered him a chance to train with the Bulgarians and it doesn't get better than training with the world champs! So... we'll be flying to Bulgaria – as soon as we have this fixed...”

He casually pointed to the injury on Hugo's arm and when Ron finally took notice of it, his eyes nearly fell out of their sockets at the sight:

“You're hurt! Christ and Merlin, son... What happened?! Who hurt you?!... And are you mad, Hugh!? What are you even doing here?! You should be in St. Mungo's having this taken care of! Oh, by the Gryffindor's lazy eye, your mother is going to have my scalp at her belt if she finds out about this!”

“Jesus, dad...” Hugo tried in an embarrassed voice as Ron launched himself at him in all his fatherly concern. “It's alright, dad, really...” he nearly fell over himself to explain. “It was just an accident, I wasn't careful and I splinched, you know how easy it is is, when you're a bit distracted and... dad... honestly... stop panicking... dad...”

But Ron would have none of it and as he fussed around his child as if he still had a small boy in front of him, scolding him and asking details of him in a worried voice, Harry used the opportunity to approach the blond now.

“Happy now?” he asked him quietly and Draco could read the very depth of his misery radiating from the bottomless green eyes, because he was the one person who deserved to see it, the one person who Potter didn't bother hiding it from, the one person who would understand how much it cost him to give the love of his life up. So he just nodded quietly and before he could think things through and change his mind, he launched himself at Potter and hugged him fiercely:

“Thank you,” he said in a trembling voice, but he couldn't manage much more and the words came slowly. “Thank you, thank you, thank you. You really are all that and more... you really are a Saviour... and a much better man than I.”

“I know,” Potter mumbled over his shoulder where his head ended up. “And if you hurt him, I'll fucking find a way to slice you into little bits and keep you alive. Don't.even.think it! Ever! I want him to wake up with a big fucking smile on his lips and I want him to go to sleep with an even bigger, obnoxious smile on his face. It's your fucking job and I expect you to do it. Don't make me regret doing this, because you have no bloody idea what it's costing me. Or maybe you do, I don't know what's going on in that scrambled Malfoyian mind of yours, you are his bonded one after all... and that's why I'm trusting you with his happiness; you, of all people, Malfoy. Because you're the only one that knows how it feels to lose him. Alright?”

“Alright,” Draco breathed quietly and thought he might have just made the most important pact of his life. “And it's Draco,” he added on a whim and Potter just made a sarcastic _“hmpf”_ and mumbled something about _that_ taking a while to stick. But then he seemed to remember something:

“Oh, and one more thing,” the wizarding prodigy murmured and his voice was a strange mixture of embarrassment and despair. “Don't you dare fucking kiss him until I'm gone. Not now. I'm just asking this small token of grace from you... because I don't think I'd be able to bear it... for now. Not yet.”

“Very well, duly noted,” Draco agreed, though this one fell heavily from his tongue; his fingers were itching to drown in the fiery hair and he couldn't bloody wait to get his hands on Ron and feel his heartbeat, the beat of the heart that belonged to him, under his touch. But the debt he owed Potter was too great.

“No kissing until you're gone,” he repeated with disciplined obedience, because, honestly, he would be willing to promise his life-long adversary both his lungs as long as he got to keep Ron. “I promise.”

They were just going to have to make up for it once the man was gone.

“Right... so that's setted,” sighed Potter heavily and then went on to mention in a casual enough voice: “Now, if I were you, I'd consider letting go... because if you don't fucking stop breaking my ribs this very minute, I might just reconsider that _“no murder”_ clause.”

And it was only then that the blond realized, mortified, that he was still holding onto him for dear life and he let go as suddenly as if he got scorched.

“Right, erm... oh, bloody Merlin, sorry about that,” the Slytherin blurted out with no pretence and no small amount of embarrassment. “I suppose I got carried away. I never expected this... thank you, again. From the bottom of my heart,” he said simply, sincerely, and the raven-haired wizard just nodded tiredly.

“There was a time I doubted that the evil-Slytherin-you even had a heart,” he murmured. “But since you're clinging onto Ron so stubbornly, I'll take that concept as a given. Come, help me glue Ron away from Hugo, I think he's just about ready to fetch him his diaper, a milk bottle and a favourite blanket; he was always a bit insane when it came to his children.”

And indeed poor Hugo was already Weasley red in the face and looked about two seconds away from exploding under the direct assault of fatherly concern from his dad.

“... goddammit, Hugh, I thought you knew better! Wait till your mother finds out, you'll be lucky if she doesn't suspend your apparition licence until you're old enough to retire! And which sorry amateur, if you please, put that wretched excuse of a bandage around this wound?! It looks like a two-year-old did it!”

“I assume that with the _“sorry amateur”_ you're referring to me,” Draco said as calmly as he could muster, barely able to keep the laughter out of his voice. “You know perfectly well, that I'm shit with these things and that I nearly fainted every time Scorpius scraped his knee. That's why I always let you handle it, you're the expert and you always seemed eager enough – so it's your own fucking fault if I don't have any experience.”

And Ron just let go of Hugo and gawped at his lover as if nothing made sense.

“You... _you_ did this?” he finally managed and then the incredulous look in his eyes slowly morphed into about a million blue stars and laugher just flew out of him like an overbearing, bubbling liquid.

“Fucking lamest job I've ever seen,” he commented and Draco felt his shoulders shake in epic, hysterical giggle that drowned in his warm strong embrace and he moaned in frustration when he remembered his promise to Potter. Perhaps he could claim that Ron kissed him and not the other way around?

But Harry had already deliberately turned away from them, because there was nothing but acid pain for him at the sight of Ron happy with another man – more so with this particular one! - and it would take a lot of time before that changed. That's why he was leaving. That, and because he was no fool. His eyes caught on Hugo's brilliant blue orbs, and a soft and shy, dreamy and completely smitten smile – and somehow, inexplicably, he felt better. Hugo would do that to him.

“Ready?” he asked him simply. “For all his excessive fussing, your dad is right. We need to have that shoulder checked out before it gets infected.”

“Did you really mean it?” Hugo asked quietly. “Taking me up on my offer... did you mean it?”

And Harry's heart just sort of melted a little in affection when he saw the million stars of hope in those brilliant blue orbs. But he couldn't lie to him. He couldn't start this, whatever this was, where ever it lead, with a lie and a deception. He also couldn't let him down as harshly as he did before, he nearly murdered himself with remorse last time he did it.

“Perhaps... with time,” he said carefully and couldn't hold back a small smile, when he saw Hugo's face light up with a grin that could make the sun at noon seem dull.

“It's all I'm asking for,” the redhead said quietly, but when Harry took his hand to side-apparate him, it was trembling and Harry could barely hold back a sigh. Hope, the cursed and persevering. That was all he could give Hugo for now.

“Harry,” a warm voice called him and it still sent shivers and sweet pain down his body, he suspected it always would. He turned around deliberately slowly, bracing himself for the shock and misery at seeing Ron in Malfoy's – Draco's - arms – but much to his surprise they were not wrapped around each other, but merely standing by each other's shoulder and only locked hands, half concealed between them, revealed they were more than just friends. Harry was grateful for this small mercy.

“You're leaving me, then?” Ron asked softly and Harry could only nod with a knot in his throat.

“I can't stay,” he barely managed to choke out, because with the sunlight reflecting from the liquid fire hair and catching in the piercing blue eyes, Ron was beautiful and beyond. “Please don't make me,” he whispered, uncertain in his own ability to endure this for much longer. “Please let me go.”

And as if by some unspoken agreement, the intertwined hands dissolved and Ron pulled him closer.

“I will never be able to thank you enough, Harry,” he whispered into his hair. “Please, promise, you'll find me if life hurts you... I couldn't bear to know you're somewhere, alone and miserable. Yours, always, remember? Even now, Harry. Always... you will always have a place in my heart.”

And Harry just nodded, his shoulders shivering under the weight of his feelings when a small, warm kiss was pressed into his hair and the embrace around him finally dissolved. The burden of his life never felt heavier and he's never felt more alone, raw and vulnerable than in this moment. He felt like locking himself up inside of his shell and cry for days. And then the thin, warm fingers crawled between his, and he squeezed on for dear life, because this, that human touch of the boy who loved him, was all he had to go on for now.

“Come,” Hugo said gently and when his dad, misty eyed, said _“Hugh...”_ in a choked, pleading voice, he simply nodded, because he knew the world of feelings this single word contained - _“Please, take care of him...” “Please, make sure that he's safe...” “Please, make him forget the way I hurt him...”_ \- and luckily, Hugo could read his dad, who was never the most eloquent of men.

Ron made a few steps backwards and let Draco's finger's wrap around his own again, lifting his free arm in the last, small gesture of goodbye and Harry put all his remaining strength into returning the gesture – and then they were gone, because now, with Harry holding his hand, Hugo could do this; he could side-apparate the whole fucking country if someone asked it of him. Harry chose – and he chose a life with him. That was all that mattered, he would deal with the rest as they went; he was a Slytherin, he was more than equipped for dealing with whatever life handed him... as long as he was by Harry's side. And then one day, perhaps... Perhaps, Harry said. Hugo chose to find hope in that. From now on, future was full of wonderful possibilities.

Ron just stood there, as if dazed, with his eyes still glued to the empty space that was moments ago occupied with the man that was once his whole life. But he was barely allowed a breath when the most delicious lithe body got wrapped around him and he was pulled into a kiss that wiped out his memory of all the bitterness and sorrow he got to experience in this trying, undoing day. His man smelled like an aphrodisiac full of divine promises and tasted like the elixir of most delicious surrender and his cheeks were wet and those sweet, sinful lips whispered between kisses, again and again:

“Mine... mine... good God, Ron... you're finally mine... I never hoped I would see the day... but you are. Tell me that you are... show me.”

“...Merlin, Draco... love... 'm yours...” Ron barely managed under a most delightful assault and he was beginning to fear he might indeed have to show his beautiful blond Slytherin how very much his he was, because he could surely no longer hide it. “No more loving you in the shadow...” he whispered fiercely, slowly realizing that he could finally do this... kiss Draco Malfoy in the full light of day and fear no one.

And after _“Oh, get a room, you two!”_ , which made them both burst out in a hysterical fit of laughter mixed with tears, because it was so much like that other day, their magical day in Paris, yet so infinitely better, they realized that with Harry gone, his charm had dissolved and they were indeed in a full view of a large crowd of very scandalized and shocked spectators, some of them gawping openly. Well, it was not every day that one could see a Weasley and a Malfoy kissing like their lives depended on it, like there was nothing else they'd rather be doing, like they were breathing life into each other, like they were born to do just this; stand on the crossroad of their lives and find each other again.

“Oh, man... you taste like sin, my love... oh, gods.... I'm so building Potter a shrine... ” Draco murmured into his mouth and then as if on a second thought, he added: "... and I'm marrying you." And it sounded as if it wasn't even up for discussion.

“Not so fast... Malfoy,” Ron barely managed to breathe into the warm, intoxicating mouth devouring him whole, making him feel as if he was never truly kissed before. But to hell with him, if he wasn't going to put up even a bit of fight... a Weasley here, hello?! They could always do with some more fuel and fire... 

“First you need to show me why on earth... oh, Merlin... why would I want to marry a sneaky bastard, who still engages in his Slytherin intrigues... behind my back... but the way you kiss, Sir... I think you might not have any problems delivering the necessary arguments... oh, man, Draco... I missed you...”

“No... nope... no problems at all...” the blond somehow gasped into the next kiss. “Let me start by saying... that I love you... I love you, my beautiful, feisty Gryffindor, I love you, Ron... Is that argument enough... you think? Merlin, man... we need to take this elsewhere or I swear I'm making us look indecent in the next second or so...”

“Quite an argument... enough... you manipulative... gorgeous... oh, fuck it, I love you, too, Draco.... now... could you, please... please... live up to your word and take us elsewhere... or your father is up for a heart-attack with his morning paper...”

“Well, we can't have that, can we... I want a wedding, not a bloody year-long mourning!” the blond murmured and finally broke the kiss just to sort out his clothes and give the stunned crowd his lewdest, most brilliant grin. “Stop kissing me, or I'll splinch us all the way to Bulgaria and I don't want Potter getting your best bits!” he hissed as he desperately tried to focus enough and his overwhelmed, smitten lover just wouldn't let him.

“Sorry about that...” Ron mumbled into his neck. “It's just that you taste so nice... and now that I can finally have a full portion of you...”

“Oh, Merlin be merciful... Weasleys and their insatiable sex drive... I’m doomed!” Draco rolled his eyes up in mocked despair, and hid his nearly feral smile into another desperate, hungry kiss. And those just happened to be the last words Rita Skeeter, who just rushed in, picked up before they disapparated - and they completely made her day... as well as the headlines for the next six weeks or so. Along with Lucius Malfoy finally recovering enough to return from St. Mungo’s, recently divorced Harry Potter spotted in Bulgaria _“very gently attending to an injury”_ of his nephew and protégé, a projected future Quidditch super-star Hugo Weasley, and – with big greasy letters dripping with ink – _“Scandalous: Harry Potter’s rebellious son seen holding hands in Paris with Draco Malfoy’s heir!!!”_ – next to a page long _“The world around us is crumbling!”_ special report commenting on all the mortifying recent developments on the Potter-Weasley-Malfoy axis by the senior correspondent Rita Skeeter.

With all the wonderful juicy pieces of gossip around, a tiny notification in The Quibbler, that _“D.L. Malfoy and R.B. Weasley sealed their love and life-long commitment by making their marriage vows in a private ceremony at the Bellevue estate”_ , remained right where their quiet, precious love had stubbornly survived and bloomed for decades - safely in the shadow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this was supposed to be the end of our very long journey together (OMG, it's been over a year!) and I just couldn't make everyone blessedly happy - that's not me. I suppose I couldn't write a linear, black&white story to save my life and if you read any of my other stories than you know who usually picks of a bitter bill of Ron's folly. *hugs the bespectacled one*  
> Buuuut - how is there always a "but" when the end of this story is involved, no wonder I used to call it "the endless one"! - some of the most faithful readers came to believe that I had put the characters through too much not to give them their "happily ever after" - so I guess I was silly enough to write an epilogue. *sheepish grin*  
> Consider yourself warned to encounter utter mushiness if you decide to read it, but there's really no need to. As far as I go, this is the actual end to the story - and the epilogue is just my way of thanking those of you, hopeless romantics, for your patience, some wonderful comments and encouragements and generally, just for sticking with this impossibly long story. I certainly would have faltered and fell and not get up a thousand times if it wasn't for all of you, lovely people giving me a boost with every new chapter. Thank you all.  
> You know, for all the miauwing I did over this fic across the months, I kind of like it now, that it's finished. :) And it really is. With or without the epilogue. :)


	59. Epilogue

  _"Lust equals fire when you come to me_  
_Obsession and craving burning inside of me_  
_..._

 _It runs through my veins and through my heart_  
_Assuring that death won't do us part_  
_Then leaving me craving torn apart..._

_I just want you_

_..._

_It's needless to say, I need you inside my heart to stay_  
_All else is cleansed away, all else is hollow anyway."_

Poisonblack, All else is hollow

 

“I’m going to be sick!”

“Hugo Weasley, you will most certainly not be sick all over the wedding robes that cost a bloody fortune!”

“Draco, would you kindly shut up?! This is _my_ son, of course he’s bloody nervous – we, the Weasleys, get nervous! Rose had to splash a glass of water in my face before I was able to walk down that aisle with you! You’re lucky I didn’t run away!”

“That I am,” Draco murmured and leaned into his husband, secretly sneaking an arm behind his arse and squeezing gently, immediately taking the edge of his irritation, earning himself a blissful smile and a kiss.

“Oh, for the love of Merlin’s underpants... you two... after all these years... really?! Dad... really!? Hello, the groom here! About-to-be-sick-on-your-shoes-groom here!”

“Hugo, son... you’re not going to be sick, sweetheart. Just breathe deeply, alright?!”

“I am, dad! I’m positively going to vomit... oh, my... what was I thinking?!... I can’t go through with this, I’m so nervous I’m going to chew off my own tongue! Oh, why did I say _“yes”_?! Why!? And now I’m here about to burst a vessel! What if he runs away?! Could you check if he’s still there?!”

“Hugo, sweety, relax. He’s not going anywhere, your mother’s got her claws around his neck and you’re probably going to have to shout that _“I do”_ really loud, because I imagine he’s deaf on both ears from all the advice on appropriate behaviour and safe sex she’s feeding him! It will be alright, darling, it really will,” Ron approached his youngest and wrapped him in a big comforting embrace as if he was still a little boy, even when they have been the same height for the last decade or so.

“And you know very well you said “ _yes_ ” because it’s Harry, remember? Harry bloody Potter! The Saviour! The most powerful wizard alive! The same Harry you’ve known all your life, the man you’ve loved all your life – though I was the last to find out, as it’s the custom in this household...”

“Well, we can’t help it, if you’re oblivious enough to ask that elephant in a parlour what’s the weather like outside, before you’d notice that something’s not quite right, my love!” Draco smiled beatifically into the smitten eyes of his beloved and instead of a reproach, he earned himself a goofy grin and got another peck on the mouth.

“Well, it’s not my fault Harry was not very forthcoming! He could have at least given me a warning before he sent me the wedding invitation! I woke up half an hour later - with Draco here freaking out, getting ready to send a Howler to Harry - thinking it was all just a dream!”

“Well, I’m not going to defend Potter from knocking my husband flat out from thousand miles away, am I?! That was indeed an appalling thing to do! Not the proposal bit, Hugo dearest, no – that was years overdue – but his behaviour lacked a bit in the department of tact, if you don’t mind me saying so...”

“Harry was petrified,” Hugo said quietly, in an edgy voice. “He told me he wanted to ask me eons ago, but he wasn’t sure how dad was going to react...”

He glanced nervously at his father, not exactly sure on Ron’s feeling about his wedding to his former lover – it all came so suddenly, there was no time... But all the remaining doubts he might have harboured melted like a morning mist in the summer sun when dad just smiled, though a bit sadly, and looked him in the eye:

“Harry is precious, Hugh...” he said gently. “And I will say this: if he was still mine to give, of all the people out there, you deserve my most precious. So here - ” he quietly removed the thin silver chain around his neck and took off the ring; the one ring he never let go all those years, but when he needed to make room for his wedding ring, he just quietly moved it onto the necklace that also held a tiny Eiffel tower pendant and Draco never said a word. But now it was time.

“Here you go...” he said with a strangely dry throat. “It's yours now. You will be his husband, he's now in your care.”

“Dad...” Hugo's voice was tight his voice was barely there, but then he suddenly blurted out what must have been his worse fear: “What if he doesn't want me to have it, dad? What if he doesn't want me... what if he still wants you?”

Those last words were barely above the whisper, yet the despair that breathed out of them was so crippling and so genuine that even his blond step-father paid Ron a concerned look. That was not a good way to start a marriage.

“What makes you say that, honey?” Ron said calmly, in a soothing voice. “Was there something Harry had said?”

“Well... no,” admitted a mortified-looking young man. “But once it was clear my injuries no longer permit me to continue my career, he was the one who insisted that we move back here – and... you don't see it, but I do – the way he still looks at you... like you still take his breath away...”

“Oh, baby...” Ron held him close and it was obvious that this was nearly as hard on him as it was on Hugo. “Well... we can't have that, can we?” he suddenly decided and straightened himself up. Hugo clearly recognised the determined look in his eyes and his voice was suddenly flushed with panic.

“Dad... what are you doing?!”

“Well, getting you your bloody answer, what else?” Ron mumbled and Draco thought, despairing, that the obstinate look on his face would most certainly be found under _“pig-headed”_ in the vocabulary.

“Ron, don't be absurd,” the blond tried in his most haughty manner, but the little panicked voice buried deep under the memories of all their happy years together was screaming for _that_ particular answer as well.

But this once, his proud Gryffindor was unrelenting:

“No child of mine is marrying anyone who doesn't truly love them, and I don't care if it's Harry bloody Potter,” he said in a firm, clear voice. “I won't have my son wake up at night and wonder who it is, his husband _really_ thinks of when they make love. I don't want that for Hugo. I made a big part of this mess and it's in my power to clean it. I know Hugo doesn't trust himself to get a truthful answer out of Harry. But I can. I'll get you your answer, Hugh, and it's going to be the one you'll like very much - or there will be no wedding here today.”

He left, the necklace with a ring still clutched between his fingers and Hugo collapsed on the floor like an empty sack.

“Merlin be merciful...” he whispered. “What have I done?!” And Draco sat down, on the floor near him and hugged him across the shoulders, thinking the exact same thing. He was far more worried than he was willing to admit.

~

“Come in,” Harry answered, sounding exhausted, but when he saw the visitor his eyes lit up like stars and his face stretched into the biggest smile ever.

“Ron!”

It was the only thing he managed before he launched himself at his best mate whom he hasn't seen since the Weasley's Christmas party – and in that commotion, only briefly. Ron was one reason, a very important one, why Harry wanted to go home at long last – he had missed the man, Merlin, had he missed him! And right before they dropped the bomb of the sudden wedding invitation, Harry was going spare with panic. Surely there were hints dropped by that horrible Skeeter character over the years, questioning the decency of the bond between Harry Potter and his nephew, but Harry knew Ron paid no attention to such gossip, he was well-aware of the depth of his obliviousness and he knew how very unprepared the wedding invitation was going to find him.

They had spoken to no one but Hermione about their relationship and Hugo had suggested confiding in his mother for several reasons. Number one, she would have guessed anyway, Hugo argued, and Harry had to agree – Minister Granger Weasley was as astute as always and years had not dulled Hermione's instinct and sharp powers of observation – if they let her figure out on her own, her reaction was going to be unpredictable at best.

But Hugo knew his mother to the back of her head and Hermione was not the only brilliant member of the family. He suggested that they make her their confidante and surely that would make her take their side if his father was not willing to be reasonable – and making an ally rather than an adversary of Hermione Granger Weasley was definitely set high on a list of their priorities if _“the wedding ambush”_ , as Hugo referred to it, was to be a success. Surely, she would still shout at them and scold them both, but it might be a notch less intense than if they were foolish enough to go behind her back. And in spite of all the fuss, she would help. Because last, but not least, if they wanted to have any semblance of a wedding on such a short notice, Hermione was their girl. And Harry knew very well why he proposed and why he wanted to make it a quick business.

So they had sent the invitation and arrived merely two days ago to get it done and Harry had not seen Ron since. But here he was, hugging Harry just as fiercely and warmly as he always did, ever since they were kids together, and the rock that fell off Harry's heart when he felt Ron's arms around him, as familiar and as welcoming as ever, could have sunk Azkaban with all the Dementors on board. Ron was still his friend, he was still happy to see him and everything was going to be alright. Because if Ron's reaction would have been different, if he wasn't in favour of them, his best mate and his youngest being an item – a very much married item soon! – Harry wasn't sure if he would have been able to go on with it. He was desperate for Ron's approval. And it seemed this was a given and Harry suddenly felt as light and elated as a balloon sold at the Sunday market and younger than in years.

But when he looked his best mate into the blue eyes, as mesmerising as ever, the happiness slowly seeped out of him as if his cocoon of joy was leaking. Ron's sincere affection was most definitely lined with a serious tinge and there was a hard line by the soft mouth, which Harry recognised all too well. Not quite everything seemed right and Harry's heart sank at the thought.

“Hermione,” Ron finally acknowledged his ex-wife, standing at the side, frowning and smiling all in one and when he pulled her closer to kiss her on the cheek, she might have lingered under his touch just a tad too long and she might have closed her eyes when his lips touched her and she was suddenly flooded with that special Ron scent and she knew that even after all those years, there was still no one quite like her Ron. She would go to her grave loving this man.

“Can you give us a moment, love?” Ron asked her and only then she noticed how solemn his expression was and concern stirred in her chest like a swarm of mad bees.

“Is everything alright, Ron?” she quietly asked the father of her children, but the redhead merely sighed almost imperceptibly and shrugged:

“I hope so. Harry here has an answer to that. You might want to go and check on your son. I think he might be in a right state – you know, Weasleys and pre-wedding panic...” he offered her a sheepish half-smile and she realized he was politely telling her to get lost. There was a wild streak in those blue eyes and somehow she had a bad feeling about all this – yet if Hugo really needed her, and he might – well, she didn't really have a choice, did she? The wedding was due in a few hours, for god’s sake!

“I'll be right back,” she tried to tell them not to do anything foolish, but she knew she might as well have been barking at the moon: if Ron came here to do something foolish, he will follow through and be what it may. He was exceptionally stubborn even for a Weasley. As she closed the door behind her and hurried towards the room where she hoped to find her son in, she was already working herself into panic.

As soon as the door closed, Ron turned back to Harry and Harry could not lie to himself: even after all those years the man could take his breath away. He felt a familiar pang resonate through his chest when he looked up into those bluest of blue eyes and had a flashback of owning those soft lips once – but this had not been that same sharp pang that had nearly knocked him into a pit of depression and made him drown a decade ago and he reminded himself stubbornly that in an hour or so he would be the kissing the lips just as sweet and plush as these and owning a gorgeous man that came with them. All there was left now, was just this wistful memory of a childish dream, that was all... yes, that had to be it.

Ron's eyes had searched through his for a long moment and suddenly he lifted his hand with what looked like a necklace in it and Harry recognised the ring... and for some reason his heart went on a rampage. Why this ring!? Why now?! Was Ron crazy enough to try and enforce a promise he had himself broken a million times?! _“Yours, always”_ it said and Harry was suddenly flooded with such an impossible mixture of feelings he was barely left standing.

“I came here to ask – whether he could give this ring to Hugo,” Ron said quietly. “Because if the answer is "no", then you don't deserve my son, Harry. I need you to say it; I need you to tell me that I can let go of this ring and give it to my son, because he should be the rightful owner of those words, of the heart that comes with them.”

But instead of an answer Harry just looked at him, looked deeply into the blue eyes and Ron's heart broke when he saw that the legendary green eyes were misty:

“You kept it... all this time and you kept it. I thought you've gotten rid of it years ago... but you still have it. Merlin... Why did you keep it, Ron?”

“Harry, this ring is my most prized possession,” Ron said quietly. “It holds my most sacred memories and serves as a bitter reminder of all the promises that I broke, so I would never make the same mistakes again. And while I hold this ring... you're always close to me, Harry," he smiled at the smitten face of his best mate and added firmly: "And god knows I've missed you. But now it's time to let go. I need to give it to Hugo and tell him, you wanted him to have it, with all that it entails - or I cannot let you marry my son. Please, Harry... he needs to know he's the only one in your heart.”

He took his hands into his big, warm palms and closed them around the bony fingers.

“Please, Harry...” he repeated, because he knew Harry could read all the wild, mad mixture of feelings swarming underneath his words.

“You know,” the green-eyed man said after a long, heavy silence and his voice was trembling. “The boy inside of me, the one you cheated on and left behind, Ron, was always hoping that one day you'll show up and tell me you made a mistake, that it's really me that you want, that you want to wear my ring and be mine. I've dreamed it for years... but not anymore. Because when I saw you hold it, the man inside of me finally woke up... and he was afraid. Afraid that you were going to try and ruin this for me, afraid that you're going to try and keep me from the man that truly deserves this ring. I love Hugh, Ron," he smiled and it was a beautiful smile as if something inside of him that was clutched for years, got released and he was finally free.

"I love him," he repeated almost as if he delighted in saying those words. "I've always loved him, perhaps not with the same kind of love at all times, but he certainly always warmed up my heart, from the very beginning and –"

But he stopped abruptly and suddenly his legendary green eyes clouded over and turned worried "- and of course I want him to have this ring," he continued quietly and then added more heatedly: "He's earned the words on them ten times over! Oh, Ron...” he hid his face into his best mate’s chest where he always found his solace. It took him a while to calm down to say what he wanted to say, but when he picked up his train of thought, his voice sounded rusty and unfathomably sad.

“I guess I needed this shock treatment to see that... but what frightens me the most now, is the fact that I've made such a lame job of letting him know that I do. I guess... I was afraid to say it,” he admitted quietly, looking infinitely sad. “I've said it to you so many bloody times, I got so dependent on you, so clingy – and still I lost you. So when I got together with Hugh, I was so very frightened that if I ever said it, I was going to jinx the Fate, show that bitch my cards and lose the man I love once more. And I know he doesn't know, you wouldn't be here, if he did,” he said bitterly and Ron's heart squeezed in his chest. “How could I have blundered so? How can I look him in the eye now? Will he ever believe me, even when I say it?”

“Well,” Ron said thoughtfully. “There is _one_ way. And it is either going to work, or it won't. But we need Hermione, I don't possibly have the brain power required for it. And I need to speak with Draco, we need help and, possibly, a few hours' delay. And we need this ring.”

~

When his dad returned, with no ring in his hands, looking solemn, and asked for his mother to step outside for a minute, Hugo's heart sank to the deepest pits of hell. Dad didn't wear his usual smile, which was always a bad sign – and he had no ring to give him. Harry must have asked it back, then; he must have figured out he wasn't ready to let him have it and the world suddenly seemed to have lost all colour and even the air tasted like ash. He felt the grip of Draco's arm tighten around his shoulders and that was the only connection to reality he still had. His head seemed to be swimming and he couldn't get that persistent, acid memory of the day he spilled his feelings to Harry for the first time, out of his head. The way he looked at him with shocked, green eyes, as if he was looking at someone unfamiliar. The way he removed his hands unrelentingly. The way he told him he didn't want to hear another word from him, the way he let him go...

It always retuned to him, that memory, like his very own, private torture, like a bad dream; and it always hit him when he was his most vulnerable, the weakest and in a really bad need for Harry to finally say the words that slipped out of his mouth so easily when he spoke to his father: that he loved him. But Harry... wouldn't. Not even when the blissful night came when Hugo had said his goodnight and Harry unexpectedly took his hand and breathed a single word - _“Stay...”_ \- and Hugo's heart nearly jumped out of his chest at the gesture and Harry answered all of his unspoken questions with a single, needy, almost violent kiss and Hugo just melted into him, too smitten to question his motives. Not that it would have mattered anyway.

He had meant what he told Harry all those months back – he didn't need his promise, he didn't need a ring and with gritted teeth he told himself he didn't need Harry's heart. He just needed Harry. To be around him, to wake up next to him, to feel his hands on him and that desperate mouth that could reduce him to stuttered pleas, because Harry would never stop short of that, as if he had something to prove. He made love to Hugo as if it meant something... yet he had never said those words. Not even when a mere month ago Hugo was hit by a viciously aimed, magically tampered-with bludger straight into the chest and temporarily lost the ability to breathe – and had woken up in Harry's lap to the the image of the green-eyed man, still wet-cheeked, combing his hair and frantically whispering _“please, wake up, Hugo.... baby, please wake up, I can't make it without you...”_ \- and a ravaged Quidditch pitch, full of unconscious and moaning, limping opponents Harry's unpredictable burst of frustrated and magnificently protective magic had knocked to the ground.

When Hugo was told he could no longer play professionally because the risks of the scarred and barely put together heart-sac tearing were too great, Harry's only response was: “Well, that's that, then. Time to go home.” And after a while, almost as if on a second thought, he added quietly: “Would you consider marrying me?”

And Hugo's jaw just dropped and his heart nearly stopped once again and when barely uttered _“Are you serious?! Are you bloody serious, Harry?!”_ , Harry just smiled and put his arms around him and whispered in his ear that he can't imagine losing him again - and it had made Hugo so bloody happy... ecstatically, ridiculously happy, his happiest ever – and yet, Harry had still not said it. Not a word of what was in his heart. Or to be precise, _who_ was in his heart, Hugo thought bitterly.

The door that opened in a rush, broke a gloomy train of his thoughts and his mother's shrill voice floated through: “... and I swear you two have got to be the biggest pair of idiots I have ever had the dubious honour of meeting and if my child ends up hurt because of you, Ronald Weasley...”, but the door had closed and cut her off and his father coughed to cover up the embarrassment and politely asked:

“Draco, could you spare a moment? Hermione would like to have a word...”

And Hugo felt the arm around his shoulders disappear as Draco Malfoy did his husband's bidding without a single question asked – and Hugo was left hanging loose for a long, unbearable moment, before he felt his dad kneel beside him and take Draco's place.

“So...” Hugo tried, but his throat was too dry for much else.

“That’s it, then...” he added with an effort, because with every word he risked to spill the bitterness that filled him up to the brim. He knew it was too good to be true, he knew it wasn’t going to last, he knew he was too happy for this to hold, for every dream he’s ever had to come true.

“You’ve got no ring for me – so the wedding must be off...” he concluded and his voice was faint and he wouldn’t even look at his father, who got everything he ever wanted in life and some to spare; he couldn’t bloody bear it....

“I’ve got no ring for you because Harry asked for some time,” Ron said calmly, but adamantly, desperate to hide how very hurt his baby’s misery had left him. “He needs to sort some things out, in his head and... otherwise... and he asked to keep the ring. At this moment the ring is no longer mine – but it is not yours yet either. It will be what Harry makes of it.... Bloody hell, Hugh, I’m sorry!” he suddenly blurted out and pulled his son into a solid, warm embrace, overwhelmed with guilt by the sight of Hugo’s pretty pale lips trembling and his brilliant blue eyes focused firmly on the ground at his feet not to lose a battle with sadness, barely kept from spilling over.

“I’m sorry that you have to suffer so, Hugh. It’s all my fucking fault, I fucked up all our lives beyond belief and my only wish is that you and Harry would finally stop paying the price. I admit I was shocked out of my shell when I first received the wedding invitation, I honestly didn’t see it coming – but that doesn’t mean that I don’t want this to be the best thing in your life, love. I’m so stupidly happy with Draco, I wish you were, too, I never wanted anything less for any of my children. I know you make him happy, I know you do, baby. It’s just that... Harry was never the most verbose of people; those horrible people that raised him knocked it into his head that bringing one’s feelings up was a very bad idea, that he's better off keeping them to himself, so perhaps he doesn’t say it as much as he should – but I know he cares, Hugh, I just know it. I hope with all my heart that you two make each other happy and beyond – and that perhaps I can stop feeling so bloody guilty every time I look at him - and now that I know - at you as well. I know you must hate me, but...”

“I don't hate you, dad,” Hugo sighed. “How could anyone hate you? It's just that... you have it so bloody easy when it comes to winning everyone's heart – I mean, just look at them, they're all lined up for you to love them – Draco, mom - even after all these years - and even... -” he couldn't finish the thought, because it was too bitter and he simply concluded: “I don't hate you, dad. I love you, just like the rest of them. It's just that I'm possibly a bit envious. You see, I only want one man – and no one else. And every time you're around I seem to lose him a little bit.”

“Oh, Hugh... please don't say that,” Ron whispered. “If only you knew... you shouldn't think like that. Harry would never give you up, not for me, not for anyone. Why do you think he proposed? Do you really think...”

“Because he can't have you and he's settling for me? Yes,” Hugo said simply. “Even your scraps and leftovers make me happy, dad,” he smiled sadly and Ron's heart shattered all over again.

“If you really believe that,” Ron tried, desperate to make his stubborn son see the error of his ways, “why in Heaven's name did you say _“yes”_ then? You think he doesn't love you, at least not as much as one should love their one and only – and you still said yes? Why, Hugh? That's all wrong!”

“Oh, you don't get to tell me what's right or wrong, dad!” Hugo's temper rose so suddenly, Ron felt as if he was slapped across the face. “When did you ever follow what's right or wrong?! You're the one to talk! You had Harry's heart, the most beautiful, generous heart there is, and you mauled it and crippled it for life, dad! And for what?! Can you tell me? Can you say it out loud?!”

“For love,” Ron said quietly, miserably. “I fell in love with Draco and I couldn't help myself. The more I tried to leave him behind and do the right thing, the worse I blundered, until one day I saw that loving him _was_ the right thing and I stopped fighting it altogether.”

“For love,” Hugo repeated quietly, heatedly. “And it's for that same love that I'm willing to take whatever Harry's got to give, whatever misery you left behind, whatever ruin you've made of his heart. For love, dad, that knows no logic and no right or wrong, for love so great, that it won't even care that it's not wanted and cannot be returned. And that's something you know _nothing_ about. But Harry does. Sometimes I think the only reason he's with me, is because he knows I understand.”

By the time Hugo was done, Ron looked so ashen pale that the young man suddenly felt a pang of shame. He was Hermione's son, he wasn't built for hurting anyone, least of all the father he loved dearly and he knew very well that even after all these years dad was still so very vulnerable when it came to Harry and what he had done to him, as if he could never really quite forgive himself.

“I'm sorry...” Hugo mumbled. “I don't know what came over me. I guess I was just expecting too much of this day and I god-honestly had nightmares about everything that could go wrong – and now that it did...”

“You're wrong!” Ron interrupted him quietly but fiercely. “You don't even know how very wrong you are. Harry knows very well why he picked you, why he asked you – and it has nothing to do with me! You'll see! What I should really do – I should really beat up the bespectacled tosser for ever making you feel that way, for making you feel like you're second best, a mere replacement, when you're ten times the man I'll ever be! And...”

He paused and it was obvious he was desperate to say something else, but finally he just took his son’s astonished face between the palms of his hands and kissed his cheek softly:

“Don't sell yourself short, Hugo,” he whispered. “This day isn't over yet.”

And as if on a clue the door opened and an uncommonly satisfied-looking Draco Malfoy walked through it, declaring _“My part is done, it shouldn't be long now!” -_ and merely raised his eyebrow at the sight of the gloomy scenery.

“Good God! I should have known better than to leave you two alone,” he murmured. “You look like your both respective Kneazles have died! Weasleys and their pre-marital gloom and doom, honestly... Ron, my love, your presence is required elsewhere and pray, do hurry up; the groom – the other groom, to be specific – seems rather anxious.”

And Ron just nodded, hugged his son tightly, for courage, once more, and left – but not before leaning into his gorgeous husband and plundering a kiss that made the blond sway on his feet a little and murmur: “Oh, my... it's going to be a long afternoon again!”

But as soon as the redhead closed the door behind him, finally sporting a small, smug smile on his lips, Draco turned towards the other, younger version of Ron, literally gawping at him in stunned awe, and frowned:

“Oh, and what is that look supposed to stand for, Hugo Weasley?! You didn't _honestly_ think I'd let that fool of your future husband cancel the wedding, did you!? Not on my watch, young man, not on my watch! And especially not after I paid for those ghastly-expensive tailor-made Italian robes that will make Potter want to put jam on your arse and just – oh, never mind me, I'd appreciate if you neglected to mention this pathetic attempt at jesting to your father, it would be awkward and your dad – well, he's a dreadfully jealous man with a temper of a wounded Hungarian Horntail...”

“So... you mean... it's still on?” Hugo asked in a small voice and he was surprised that his heart, suddenly loud awake and beating its fastest, didn't visibly jump out of his chest.

“Well, of course it's on, darling,” Draco said warmly. “Don't be ridiculous. Potter knows very well what a gem he's got in you and if that befuddled idiot walked out on you today, it would be with your father's wand up his arse... Oh, no, what is it with me and inappropriate imagery today?! Must be the wedding, brings back most pleasant memories... Well, I only meant to say, that Ron is fierce when it comes to protecting his children, just as fierce as your grandmother Molly once was, reducing that – pardon my French – bitch of my aunt Bellatrix to lovely little dust particles, dancing in the wind. The only time that woman ever was lovely, I swear. Now...”

He looked at him, appraisingly and sighed heavily.

“If Ron did that to me on my wedding day in the course of a half an hour together, I'd have to murder him in his sleep: eyes red-rimmed, hair's all tousled, bitten lip – actually that bit looks sexy, we'll let that be – but for the rest, my darling Hugo, you're a mess and you're getting married in an hour or so! Now, let's see if I still remember what my mother taught me on grooming the hair...”

~

“There!” the blond said a good half an hour later, clearly happy with a result of his work. Hugo looked at himself in the mirror and barely recognised his image – gone was the wretched man with red-rimmed eyes with shadows of sleepless, worry-filled nights underneath, his hair was as silken and glossy as it was ever going to be and plaited perfectly, he felt as if Draco must have done something to his complexion because it was glowing almost pearly and as fine as the white velvet against the exquisite blue of his eyes and rosy flesh of his plush, damaged lips. For the first time in his life he noticed not only how very much he was like his handsome father, but that he was quite stunning on his own and he smiled a tad sadly, because this recognition came too late and if Harry wasn’t game – he had no one to be handsome for.

“You, my darling, are breathtaking,” Draco came to stand next to him and watched their reflection smugly in the mirror. “If I wasn’t spoilt rotten by your father, I’d have you in a heartbeat. Potter’s pants are bound to melt right off him at the sight of you... actually, never mind me, I swear I am kind of demented today... bloody weddings, seriously... What I meant to say was – that Harry Potter, the Saviour of the wizarding world, won’t be able to stop himself from expressing his utmost appreciation of your gorgeous physique, young man...”

“And if he doesn’t?” Hugo asked quietly, his voice full of insecurity in spite of Draco’s encouraging words. “What if it doesn't bloody matter to him how good I look? What if he only says “ _yes”_ because he doesn't want to be alone and I'm as close as he can get to my father? What if he doesn't say _“yes”_ at all...?” His voice broke and the panic that filled his chest at the terrible thought made it nearly impossible to breathe.

“And what good, if you please, is worrying about it going to do?” Draco said calmly and something in his leisurely, reassuring demeanour released a tight grip the panic held on the redhead. What good indeed? He would walk down the white-pebble paths of the beautiful, lush gardens of Bellevue Estate, where his dad arranged for the wedding ceremony to take place, he would meet Harry under the arch made of red and white roses where Ron and Draco once exchanged their vows – and see what the destiny had in store for him. The blond was right: there was nothing he could do about it anymore; once again, it was down to Harry.

“We'll know any minute now if Potter is the biggest fool to have ever walked the surface of the Earth - or the luckiest bastard on the planet,” Draco said casually and added quietly: “He doesn't deserve you and don't you ever think he doesn't know it. Come, it's time. You're as ready as you were ever going to be.”

“Yes...” Hugo exhaled slowly, the arm which he slipped under Draco's offered elbow, still shaking almost imperceptibly. “Yes, I suppose I am.”

~

The walk through the Bellevue estate gardens seemed like a dream. The summer air was perfumed sweetly with a myriad of blooming flowers and the thousand of butterflies floated about like tiny colourful fairies, capturing sunlight that was slowly beginning to lose its edge as the big red fiery ball continued its journey towards the horizon. Hugo could not have picked a more beautiful day to get married, yet all this lustre was somehow redundant as if it was in his way, obscuring the image he was yearning to see: Harry, and the secret his heart held.

And when he turned the corner behind the long, tall row of rose-bushes, there he was. And he knocked the breath out of him. Dad told him Harry had once been an Auror, the best there was, but there were no pictures of Harry from that time, except a few blurry, fading photographs before Rita Skeeter got _“an official warning prior to arrest for meddling with the crime scene”_. But there he was now, in full Auror uniform, and he was gorgeous. The black robes with silver clasps and ornamented cuffs fit his lithe frame with narrow waist and broad shoulders like second skin and accentuated what a handsome man Harry Potter still was. But what really knocked the wind out of Hugo, was the fact that his father was standing next to him, looking his most elegant and too bloody gorgeous with his tall, magnificent posture – and Hugo didn't think he's ever seen anyone look better as a couple than Harry Potter and Ron Weasley did.

His knees almost buckled at the sight and if it wasn't for Draco's arm, supporting him under the elbow, he wasn't certain he wouldn't have swayed on his feet. And it was really the blond's _“Hmpf... standing too close to my man, Potter, you better watch it!”_ , murmured in a cranky, but not really upset voice, that sort of gave Hugo enough grip to realize that things weren't always the way they seemed, to remember that his father was madly in love with Draco Malfoy and that Harry was there, waiting for him.

And then his dad tore himself from Harry's side, beaming at him, and all but floated towards him, looking so happy and proud that even Hugo straightened himself up and let a shy, scared smile light up his face.

“Bloody gorgeous,” his dad mouthed proudly, as if to himself, and leaned into him. “You're gorgeous, sweetheart,” he whispered, sounding delighted, and a grateful look he paid his pleased-looking husband said more than any words could.

“Come on, baby, let's get you married,” he murmured into his ear when Hugo exchanged Draco's elbow for that of his dad and when he pressed a reassuring tiny kiss into his hair, Hugo nodded with a knot in his throat. The road towards Harry, standing by the rose-arch seemed miles long. Hugo was aware of every set of eyes that was on him and they were all there: the Weasleys, the Potters, the Scamanders and the Longbottoms and of course, a Malfoy or two; the parents, the grandparents, the children and their children's spouses and betrothed ones – Harry had planned a small, private ceremony, but this was private – these were all people who came to know and love Harry Potter in the course of his life and whom the Chosen one wanted to share his happiness with.

By the time Hugo had made it down the corridor between the rows of chairs, followed by the whispers of _“Oh, would you look at that – father and son, how splendid!”, “Ron and Hermione must be bursting with pride!” “Mommy, can I also get a pretty husband like that?”_ his legs were shaking so badly he didn't know if he was going to be left standing once his father let go. Though Hugo's drumming heart, nearly leaping out of his chest, made it feel more like a road to his execution rather than a wedding, it had to end sometime and they finally stopped; good grief, that was it!

The time itself seemed to have come to a standstill and even the soft murmur of the crowd gradually subsided into silence almost as if everyone was holding their collective breath. Hugo's eyes slowly, shyly looked up Harry's and didn't know what they were going to find. And when they did, his heart nearly stopped. Because Harry wasn't looking left nor right, he was looking directly at him and he seemed perfectly smitten.

“Good god, Hugh...” he whispered almost as if he couldn't help himself and for the first time since the night Harry asked to marry him, the redhead felt a little window of hope open in his constricted, bursting heart. Perhaps this wasn't about loneliness and substitution after all, perhaps this was the real thing... He could scarcely believe the look in Harry's eyes – it was as if someone had opened the blinds of Harry's soul and allowed him a peek inside - and it was full of light and love and happiness. And before he could help it, he felt a small intimidated smile crawl onto his face and the brilliant, sexy smile he got in return nearly knocked him off his feet. It was not every day that the Saviour of the wizarding world smiled at you as if they wanted you to look at them, as if they wanted you to be their Chosen one.

He felt his father's arm disappear from under his elbow and as much as he was frightened he might sway on his feet, Harry would have none of it; the long bony fingers wrapped around his hand in a firm, warm grip and suddenly Hugo felt a strange relief flood him, like a calm before the storm. He had arrived – and now be what it may.

“Here's my baby... treat him well, Harry,” Ron leaned forward in a whisper and for once his blue eyes were stern and pleading all at once. And Harry's eyes once again caught in the brilliant blue orbs he had once looked at in reverence and a long, lingering look he paid him said it all: it was _“I forgive you”, “Thank you for doing this”_ and _“Goodbye”_ all in one in a complicated language no one else spoke. The rest of the world merely saw Ron whisper and Harry giving him a long look ending in a soft, incomprehensible smile and Ron retreating with misty eyes to sit between a sniffing Hermione and his devoted blond husband, who immediately leaned into him and pressed his head into the crook of his neck.

All the rumours regarding the _“strange nature”_ of relationship between Harry Potter and Ron Weasley, for years hinted at by that awful Skeeter woman, were long ago discredited by an enthusiastic and completely shameless public display of affection between Ron Weasley and Draco Malfoy. As the Skeeter woman described it dryly, finally admitting defeat after a very publicized Ministry charity event: _“...if there was any mystery as to where Ron Weasley's heart lay, there was certainly none of it regarding his hands, as they failed to move off his husband's – admittedly, lovely - behind for the entire evening, putting all the pureblood etiquette scandalously to shame.”_ And now Ron Weasley giving his son up to the Saviour in person was going to put the last nail into the coffin where those rumours lay. Only a handful of people knew the truth and they all stood to lose something if it ever came out.

“So... here you all are,” Harry spoke unexpectedly and because he was Harry bloody Potter, it only took these words to immediately capture the attention of everyone present. “Thank you for coming. Now that you're here, I would like to use this opportunity to say my deepest, though much belated, but sincere “thank you” to all the people that helped me make it through my insane, turbulent life, right up until this moment, when I'm about to trust my happiness to the hands and heart of a man I came to care for beyond words.”

He smiled into the brilliant, awed eyes of his future husband and could barely tear himself away from the blue light that filled Hugo Weasley's eyes – there was something magically beautiful about the young man on this day, their wedding day and Harry knew he was not going to regret what he was about to do.

“You know very well, that I was orphaned at a very young age and I have no conscious memory of my parents. The people that raised me until the age eleven – I sometimes wish I had no conscious memories of them. But then I found myself on the King's Cross, about to start a new life, dead frightened and beyond anxious that I'm just going to be an outcast yet again, with no knowledge of the wizarding world and not a friend to my name – yet I didn't have to go far for Fate to prove me, how very wrong I was. I found myself at the barrier of the wizarding world, not knowing how to enter – and there they were, the Weasleys. Molly helped me get on a Platform 9 3/4, the twins bothered with my suitcases and then there was Ron.”

He paused for a while, not certain how he should proceed, because he could not say everything that was on his mind, not to the crowd of so many, it was not only his life and not only his love to share and Ron was already barely keeping tears at bay.

“He was - and remains to this day - my best friend... and if I say _“and more”_ , Rita Skeeter is going to have a field day,” he smiled bravely and caused the lines of guests to erupt in a burst of laughter and it came in handy, because he desperately needed to get a grip on himself, he had become way too emotional and this was hard, way harder than he thought...

“But it is true: he was more. We learned and skipped school and drove our beloved Hermione mad together,” he looked at his other best friend smiling, but she was too busy sobbing in a handkerchief to do anything but wave her hand. “We obsessed over Quidditch together, we were awkward around girls together, we hated his future husband with flamboyant passion – together...” And at another loud shot of laugher even Draco Malfoy murmured _“Bloody hell, Potter!”_ sounding not at all mad, just strangely moved and sentimental.

“We quarrelled and fought each other – more brothers than friends, really – but he was still the person I would miss the most, my one true confidant, my rock in the nights filled with nightmares and despair, my partner in crime and adventure and every stupid and brave thing I've ever done – and he came with a family he shared with me so generously, I could never hope for more. Thank you, Arthur and Molly, for every home made meal, for every hand-knitted Weasley jumper, for every Christmas present wrapped with love, for numerous and wonderful months of August filled with freedom and laugher and chatter at family dinners; thank you for making me feel welcome, for making me feel like I belong and finally, for allowing me to become a part of your family all those years ago. The years I spent as an honorary Weasley, were without a doubt the happiest in my life. And Ginny - ”

He turned towards his ex-wife, uncharacteristically pale and with trembling lips, holding hands with her new husband Oliver Wood, and suddenly all the eyes of the wedding party were on her.

“You know, darling, that I've said _“I'm sorry”_ a million times...” Harry said softly. “But what drove us apart in the end could not be helped. However, I don't believe I've said _“thank you”_ often enough, certainly not enough times you deserve it. So thank you, Ginny. For decades of unwavering love and three wonderful children, for all your forgiveness and for still being my friend. And when I talk of friends, I cannot miss one of my oldest ones – Hermione, could you please stop crying for a minute so I can thank you properly?”

“Oh, stop it, you... just stop it!” Hermione sobbed even louder through fits of laughter and most of the ladies in the crowd brought up the handkerchiefs to their eyes.

“This, here, is the most amazing woman ever. Surely everyone knows that she's brilliant and resourceful and compassionate and that I would have been dead ten times over before I was out of my teens if it wasn't for her magnificent intelligence and skilful use of magic. However, not many of you know that she's also a very graceful dancer – which, perhaps, Viktor over there by her side can confirm! - she makes a killer plate of sandwiches for a tiring midnight visitor, she's a most dedicated and caring mother on the planet and – I'm sure you agree with me - by far and large, the most attractive Minister of magic the British magical community has ever had!”

A loud applause that spontaneously burst out of the crowd at these words, did nothing to console Hermione; it was as if all the dams have broken and she was bawling her heart out into Viktor Krum's shoulder.

“And that Hermione, ladies and gentlemen, was once upon a time, about 28 years ago, one half of the team that went and _made_ something most amazing.”

There was suddenly something in the calm, soft Harry's voice, some strange tremor underneath, that made the crowd go silent in an instant. The green-eyed man casually picked up the other trembling hand of the young man that was to be his husband and who looked about three seconds from passing out and smiled to the long rows of guests.

“And when I say _“made”_ , I mean that quite literally... because - you see, the other half of the team was my Ron, my best man Ron, and together they made _me_ a miracle, my special someone, the most gorgeous young man standing here before, the one that I am very much hoping to make my husband today, Hugo Weasley.”

He slowly, at long last turned towards the lovely redhead, ashen pale with blue eyes glowing like sapphire torches, and smiled into the smitten face.

“For those of you, who don't know, I'd like to point out that Hugo had always been mine. I fell in love with the little fellow the first moment Ron put the soft bundle with the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen into my lap and as far as I knew – it was mutual. I could have had the most horrid day behind me – but when that little fiery head pressed into my chest and the small, sweet voice whispered _“Wanna share a chocolate frog, Harry?”_ I was set right, I was fixed and all better. But you see, the problem with children is – they don't stay small and adorable, they have a nasty tendency to grow up – and by the way remind you of how old you've become.”

Harry paused at another set of scattered giggles and suddenly smiled almost sadly, as if he was surrendering to a dreamy memory:

“And boy, my Hugo grew up beautifully. Yet somehow I failed to notice it and it never really hit me that this gorgeous young man will one day bring home a girl or a boy he fancied, because... well, because the idea was a horrible one, simply unthinkable and no one was ever going to be good enough for my Hugh. And because he never did – bring anyone home, that is - I remained safely harboured in the misconception that he was still too young, that there was still time, that he was only eighteen – wait, what?! When did he become 18 years old, he was 18 months old just a week ago!! How dare he!” And at the explosion of laughter Harry gently fixed the escaped lock of hair behind his beloved's ear and when Hugo quickly caught his hand, rubbed his cheek against it and kissed it, there was a collective _“aahhh”_ from the crowd at the loving gesture.

“You see,” Harry continued, “it turns out I was lucky. It turns out, that my Hugo was waiting for me. And one day, when I was in a really dark place, he came to me and offered me his beautiful, pristine heart and told me, that he found himself in my eyes... What a brave and a heartbreaking thing to say to a man that had been so damaged and broken by the world that he could see nothing but darkness... And the stupid, deluded idiot that I was, I didn’t see it coming and I wasn’t ready to accept it - so pushed him away in a most horrible manner. I very nearly lost him that day – and as soon as he left, it hit me. It hit me like a fist to my stomach that I cannot live without the light and warmth that was Hugo Weasley in my life and that whatever kind of love it was, that we felt for each other – it was very real and for all ages. My world without him was dark and unbearable.”

“Harry...” Hugo whispered, his fingers contracting inside Harry’s fists as if he was looking for a grip, his eyes instantly filling with tears, but the raven-haired wizard just smiled sadly and mouthed _“Forgive me, I have to...”_ and then he picked up loudly again, but clearly not quite composed as before:

“So I sought him out, I begged his forgiveness and I asked for time. And he had given it. He had always given me whatever I asked of him, waiting for me patiently to come to my senses - and prejudiced and filled with guilt that I was, it took me forever. I’d love to slap myself in the face now, thinking of all the time lost; of all the time when I could have owned this lovely man – and I stopped short of it, because of – what, really? I already knew he loved me, yet I didn’t know how to bring myself to say the words, to tell him, that he means the world to me. I tried to show him. When I finally noticed that he was, indeed, a man, and a breath-taking man at that, I nearly drove myself around the bend trying to persuade myself that I should let him go, give him up to one of his numerous suitors – but I couldn’t drive him away, because deep down inside every fibre of my heart was screaming that Hugo was mine, that I will tear myself to bits if I make him go away.

So I kept silent and I let him linger and I was living in hell of denial for long months, trying to mask the nature of my changed feelings until I could take no more and I nearly drove myself spare with desire to own this man, to own him good and proper. It took me over a year to work up the courage - and that beautiful soul here just waited for me all this time: waited patiently, gave me time, attention and love I hardly deserved, asking nothing in return and I know if I asked for more, I would have gotten more, because that's just how my Hugh is – there is no end to the love he’s got for me, he’s just that wonderful and patient and loyal and brave and... well, perfect.” He looked him deep into those blue eyes, brilliant with held back tears and repeated softly: “My Hugo is perfect.”

“Don’t...” Hugo whispered in a shaky voice. “Please don’t... you’re killing me here... I’m going to cry like a nancy any time now and you’re going to end up with a terribly wretched groom... please, don’t... there’s no need, really...”

But Harry just shook his head unrelenting and replied quietly: “They have to know... _you_ have to know... I never told you – and you need to know. This is my confession... to you.” And Hugo just closed his eyes and tried his best to get a grip on himself, losing several pearly drops in the effort which he tried to clean from his cheeks hastily.

“And then...” Harry continued with a strangely rough voice, “.... a few years ago I finally made that step that cost me a month of sleepless nights and _“Ron will kill me”_ thoughts and asked him to stay... stay with me, and I got to see that look on his face, that devoted, brilliant smile of absolute bliss lighting up the Universe, and it completely melted my marbles and my heart. When I first held Hugh close, not as the boy who used to be my favourite, but as a man I wanted to spend my life with, I was so overwhelmed with feelings that I couldn’t even open my mouth and tell him how much this meant to me, how much I cared, because - damaged as I was - I had no idea what crazy heart-wrenching wreckage was going to come flying out. I just remember I felt like sobbing and I couldn’t bring myself to let go. If he was to change his mind then, I would have fallen apart completely. But that’s not my Hugh. My Hugh never let me down. Not once.

Just look at him, standing here, all gorgeous and brave, nearly crying and still doing this, just because I asked it of him; taking in all the words I should have said to him in private years ago, but I just never got my stupid heart to translate it to my tongue, because... because I was dead frightened that if I had said it – I would challenge the Fate again and lose this one priceless thing I got to have... as I had already lost so many things and people that I loved. So I kept silent and I kept him waiting, never saying the words – until that horrible accident. I swear the time had stopped for me when I saw him fall and my heart stopped with it. With his limp body in my arms I realized in horror, that my Hugo might never know how much he means to me... and I found that thought unbearable. So, no more, Hugh.”

Harry straightened himself up almost as if he wanted to do this formally, yet his voice was unfathomably soft when he looked straight into the blue eyes, filled with tears:

“Your waiting ends here, my love. Today you get to hear it all. How I miss you, and need you, every hour you’re not around me; how I want to cherish you and spend the rest of my life with you - and how you’re the only one for me... because you were always here, right here, in my heart, from the day you were born- and because I love you. I can finally look you in the eye and tell you in front of all these people that came to mean something in my life: I love you, Hugo Weasley, I always did and I always will. Would you please do me an immense honour and let me live up to a promise that I once gave a three-year-old boy one magical night by the bonfire: marry me, Hugo. Make me the happiest man alive and marry me, my love. Please, Hugh... don’t cry, baby... just say the words... please, love...”

“Christ... Harry... I will...” Hugo barely choked out. “I do.”

As the tremendous applause and a loud burst of cheers broke from the crowd, Draco gently pushed his sniffling husband out of the chair to remind him that this was not over yet, because they, among them, have thought of one last thing how to prove to Hugo that he was truly, deeply loved for himself:

“Ron, love, your turn now... the rings,”

“Oh, yeah... Merlin, give me a moment, I nearly forgot... this is all so... overwhelming,” Ron mumbled, barely able to make himself half-way decent by drying his face on his sleeve, making his husband roll his eyes up.

He came to stand behind Harry, currently occupied by holding a still-sobbing Hugo by the back of his neck, their foreheads touching, looking deeply connected and in a world of their own, as if they barely needed more than each other’s presence to complete this union. As reluctant as Ron was to interfere, he knew that this symbolic gesture was going to close more wounds than just Hugo’s insecurity: it was going to bring a hopeless quest of Harry’s abandoned heart, looking for unconditional love and refuge all these years, to an end; and it was going to be Ron’s pardon and his absolution as well. Therefore he no longer hesitated:

“Harry, it is time,” he reminded him gently and with a deep sigh, Harry Potter opened his eyes.

“Hugo...” he touched the young man’s wet cheek softly and put his hand onto the shoulders, trembling under the weight of the emotion. “Let’s do this right, love.”

“Yes... of course... I’m sorry... so foolish of me... just give me a second... I just can’t seem to stop... Merlin... I told you I’d be a wreck...”

“Just give me a chance to be my wreck,” Harry spoke warmly and cleaned up the traces of tears from the pretty face of a man that was about to become his. “It’s all I’m asking.”

Hugo smiled from a fresh batch of tears pooling at his eyes and he wiped them away hastily with trembling fingers.

“Merlin...” he sighed once again. “Alright, let’s do this.”

And a second later his eyes got all big and impossibly blue and he looked from Harry to his father incredulously: “You got me the ring...” he whispered and Ron smiled at him encouragingly.

“Of course,” he said calmly. “Harry – and I – wouldn’t have it any other way.”

“Dad...”

“Just take the ring and say the words, Hugo,” his dad interrupted him gently. “Those are all the words I need to hear.”

As if on a clue, the guests calmed down and the only sound in the air was the chirping of the birds, when the men in front of the rose-arch each took their respective rings in silence and Hugo spoke first, in a trembling voice:

“I, Hugo Weasley, take you, Harry James Potter as my beloved husband and my life-companion. I only ever wanted to love you, Harry," he said in a shaky voice, staring devotedly into the beloved green eyes. "I only ever did. And now I always will. Yours, always.”

His shaky hand, holding the ring, barely targeted Harry’s ring finger, but as soon as the shiny band slid on, there was a nearly visible burst of magic that closed around his hand around Harry’s fingers like one part of the ribbon and as he looked at Harry in with big, sapphire, disbelieving eyes, Harry spoke calmly, proudly, and quite unable to mask the joy that radiated from his voice

“I, Harry James Potter, take you, Hugo Weasley, as my beloved husband - and my bonded one. To love and to cherish and to never let go. You are mine as I am yours, always.”

And as soon as his calm, firm hands placed the wedding band onto Hugo’s finger, the second burst of magic connected their hands and for one sparkling moment it looked like the magical ribbon. And everybody present knew what it was; the collective breath had stopped at the single word: bonded.

“You... you had us bonded, Harry...” Hugo said in a shaky voice as if he was unable to comprehend. “And it worked.”

“Of course it worked,” Harry said proudly, sounding uncommonly happy with himself. “I never doubted it for a second, not after I saw you walk down that aisle. I swear my heart stopped, gorgeous. But I’m not giving you a single detail of how we made it work – yes, we, it was a whole conspiracy, but you're not hearing any of it before I get that kiss everyone seems to be waiting for...”

“Oh, Jesus, yes, of course, Merlin, the kiss... oh, my god, Harry, I'm going to make a most god-awful husband, you're going to regret this so much...”

“Never,” Harry said simply and took the matters into his own hands, well, mouth and out came the most passionate, almost desperate and by all means indecently long kiss that resulted in catcalls from the crowd, Ron grinning like mad and Draco, who took his husband's hand casually as soon as it was appropriate, commenting with a dry kind of delight:

“That's right, child, kiss the groom like a proper Weasley... as if Potter needed another reason to start humping your leg... oh, murder me, Ron, what is it with me and the weddings?! I swear when most people get cheesy and sentimental, I get all horny and... it's terrible! It's going to be hours before we can do anything about it and I want...”

He leaned into him and whispered something in his ear that made the redhead flush like a tomato and when he murmured _“Merlin, Draco... now, really?”_ , his blond husband beamed in all his Slytherin glory, casually slipped into his embrace and pressed against him:

“Oh, yeah... now, my love... see why I find it so... _hard_... to wait?” he smiled into the crook of his neck, the masterful, soft mouth slowly climbing up and ending their journey just in a sensitive spot below the ear and sucked gently. He knew exactly how to drive his fiery husband crazy with want. He could hear him barely stifle a moan and he smiled again, knowing well enough that he was winning. He was determined to have himself... excused from the wedding as soon as possible, because he would by no means let the surprise he planned for Ron go to waste.

“Babe... I can barely take it... could we, perhaps...” he suggested in his most pleading, needy voice – not that he had to fake it much at this point, god, no, as always the very scent of Ron had his blood rushing with ten times the speed and it only ever went to... particular body parts.

“Please...” he mewled for good measure, because if anything, those little sounds were going to prove Ron's undoing – and he really did know his husband too well.

“Harry... Hugo... could we... erm... perhaps be excused for a... fuck, Draco... bloody moment...” Ron tried, with uncommonly hoarse voice, his blond husband still faithfully dedicated to nibbling on his earlobe, but Hugo just waved him away, his mouth still engaged in what looked an exceptionally intense, bone melting kiss and Harry actually managed to moan and laugh a little into it at the same time - and let go of Hugo's neck just long enough to punch Ron lightly into the upper arm.

Ron knew they were released. Harry was finding out what it _really_ meant to be bonded and he knew they were not going to be missed.

“About bloody time, too,” his Slytherin husband murmured ungratefully and no longer bothered to pretend this was about anything else than it really was – he just side-apparated them to entrance of their bedroom and opened the door. He heard the sharp gasp and was pleased to find out that he could still shock his redhead, even after ten years into the marriage.

“Merlin... Draco...”

When Ron turned towards him, he had tears in his eyes and a big, lustrous smile on his face.

“This is exactly like our wedding night! I never knew I'd see something as magical again... How on earth did you remember all the detail?! Oh, look... the carpet made of rose-petals... and the fireflies floating in the air... and a river of candles around the bed... oh, baby, it's all here, to the last rose and candle... you remembered... and you bothered... I'm… speechless, my love... thank you.”

“Well,” Draco tried to say into a slow, luxurious kiss, but found out much to his surprise that his voice was also shaking, “I figured since you bothered every other time, this year, it's my turn.... 10 years of marriage to the most wonderful man alive... and 25 years together – that just calls for something special, don't you think?”

“Oh, yeah... most definitely,” Ron agreed, but it came out muffled as he already had his lithe, beautiful Slytherin pressed against the frame of the door and had set on to kiss the very breath out of him. He wouldn't let go until he felt the kiss turn desperate for more and the blond moaned most in urgency: “Ron... please...”

“I like it when you beg for it,” Ron whispered, fully aware what a turn on it was for his needy husband to turn all masterful and in control. “I love it when you show me you want me... and you went through all this trouble... for me... because you know how much I loved it that first time... I guess, Mr. Malfoy... you're silently begging to be rewarded... now, let me see, if I can reminisce a little... and see if I can still impress you after all these years...”

“You always impress me...” Draco whispered and then yelped in surprise and chuckled in the next moment as he was picked up with no effort whatsoever.

“As fit as always...” murmured Draco as his tall, smiling husband carried him across the threshold and Ron shut his mouth with a kiss and a murmured _“Someone's keeping me that way...”_. The redhead trod through carpet made of red and white rose-petals, happily destroying it, because he knew Draco wouldn't mind – he wouldn't admit it in a million years, but Ron knew he liked him being a bit of brute, even though he would sometimes berate him for it, just to add some fuel to their passion – after all, the blond sex-god Ron had married never made it a secret he liked it a bit rough.

So he dropped him down onto their massive bed without bothering to be gentle and immediately slid on top of him, pressing him deeply into the mattress and earning himself a needy whimper. He didn't care for niceties, he knew how his man wanted him and he captured his mouth in one hot, rough, desperate kiss that had Draco gasping for breath and arching from the bed in need of a contact with the worshipped body, that knew his needs. His redhead was hard already, he could tell, and that readiness, that eagerness, concealed and contained by merely a fabric of his robes, drove the blond spare with want. Ron wanted him... and he had to hide it... for god-knows how long... he was hard for him, he was waiting... ready... Draco knew exactly how he wanted this to go down... but Ron wasn't game without some playing. That's why he loved him, loved this, the games they played so; he would always make him go that extra length, stretch it for another unbearable minute that had Draco gagging for it. And today it was no different.

Before he knew it, Ron had flipped them over and the blond was on top of his fiery lover, positioned above his hard cock, pressing tightly against the cloth of his expensive, custom made trousers and Draco just knew they are going to be ruined by the time this day was over. They were never very careful when the passion over-took them and something depraved deep down inside of him was looking forward to the moment when they destroyed stuff of value to get to each other. It was his way of saying to Ron that he treasured him above anything money could buy.

“Strip for me,” Ron said in a rough voice, that couldn't hide how much he wanted this. “C'mon, baby, take it off, all of it, every last bit... it's a fucking crime covering a body like yours... and you know how much I like watching you... watching that marble, pearly skin of yours appear... I swear it has a glow of its own, you're like a fallen angel, beautiful...”

And Draco did exactly what he was asked to. He slowly, deliberately rubbed his arse against the hard bulge, pressing against him and earned himself a wanton moan and then set his hips rolling in a slow, permanent rhythm that knew it was going to break his redhead's resolve to stretch this sweet torture any longer than he could bear it. He slowly began unbuttoning every last round button with those long, aristocratic fingers Ron loved to lick and he casually brushed against his neck... his nipple... and another... and hesitated at the first button of his perfectly ironed Italian trousers, at the moment so full of his swollen cock, they were nearly breaking at the seams. He wanted this, gods how he wanted it, but Ron hasn't give his permission yet and Draco knew he liked to be in charge.

“Let me... let me do that for you...” the redhead spoke in a parched, heavy voice, his eyes unable to move from the gently rocking hips, tempting him with the hard bulge between them, already leaving a stain on the expensive fabric. As Draco could have predicted, Ron didn't bother with the buttons; he had simply torn the whole thing apart, sending the buttons flying in all direction and Draco gasped and laughed with a dry throat all in one, because he loved this display of raw power. The redhead had reached for the hard shaft greedily in a way that it made the blond moan most lusciously, and the strong fingers stroke him roughly through the remaining fabric of his underwear.

“All of it...” Ron said with quiet urgency that told Draco he was close to a breaking point. “I said take all of it off... stop teasing me... because I need you naked... and in my mouth... now, fucking now... I want to suck on that delicious swollen flesh you worked up for me... let you fuck my mouth some cause I know how desperate it makes you... I want to lick the little pearls from your slit until you're shaking with want... want to make you wet and dripping for when I'm inside you, fucking you hard... straight into that sweet, raw, needy spot of yours that makes you scream and pours all the beautiful filth out of your mouth that only makes me go harder...”

The blond was left without a functioning brain at the mental image of his engorged, hot cock slipping between Ron's generous lips and pounding into that welcoming mouth. Ron cock-sucking skills could reduce him to a whimpering, pleading mess and he could never get enough of it. He couldn't even begin to count the times when the thought of those pliant, soft lips stretched around his bothered cock appeared in the most inconvenient circumstances and made him desperate for release, when there was no chance of it. God forbid his imagination would take him in the direction of the silken cave, full of delicious juices and that tormenting, heavenly tongue slapping across his naked, leaking shaft... pumping down the bottomless throat jerkingly, with no control... He's wanked in meetings to those fantasies, for fuck's sake, unable to hold it in, and most times he had to cast a non-verbal _Silencio_ on himself in order to keep his embarrassment to himself... Hell, no, he didn't have it in him to delay a single moment when Ron offered to melt him into cream in his mouth...

He didn't even know how he got rid of the rest of his clothes – he must have used some emergency magic that didn't even need a wand – and as soon as he sunk in, he was unable to keep to a loud, desperate _“ahhhh... oh, bloody hell... ChristandfuckingMerlin... Ron...”_ to himself. It was Heaven. Or at least he was on his way there. As soon as that tongue does what Ron promised it would... _ohgodhavemercy_... how come it was even better than he remembered it... every.bloody.time... Ron's mouth just loosened and dissolved every tight string of “must and cannot” rules of behaviour he was controlled with and brought to the surface the raw, passionate, needy creature he was underneath. Fucking Ron's mouth was something else entirely, a new level of existence for Draco, and it was his to have... every day, if he wanted to... all the time... if his redheaded god allowed it... Merlin have mercy, he was so close, so very close...

“That's enough... that's quite enough, my love...” Ron let go of him and he whimpered in frustrated, desperate need, but only for a moment, until he heard a short, urgent: “Underneath me... now... bloody now, you beautiful blond bastard, I can't take another second without you...” and he smiled blissfully, wantonly, because there was this one other thing that he liked even better than being devoured by that decadent mouth: he was an utter and complete whore for his cock. Ron knew how to do... things with it, give it to him, take it away, tease him with it and just brutally fuck him until he was undone by every last string and he begged for it, for the heavenly release it brought.

He loved every second of this, every inch, every shove, every unstoppable grunt and broken endearment, a rough curse and a victorious howl... he loved squirming and rocking and shifting and searching and finding, oh, god how he loved finding that spot inside of him that tensed and itched for its master... until it came... sliding like a serpent against him at first, testing the texture in a way that it made him miss a breath and gasp... and then it came again... teasing and drilling and pounding and fucking making him burst with unbearable tension and screams... he could never take long... and when he'd been worked up by Ron's tongue before he had to hold back before he was even hit the first time.

And he couldn't help himself spilling all those loving, filthy words, every depraved fantasy, he came up with, every desire inspired by the feeling of Ron inside him, filling him up, joining with him in the most intimate way. He knew how his redhead loved it when he talked him through it and he loved making a mess out of him. “Fuck me, you decadent fiery demon... fuck me harder... don't you think I didn't see it how hard you got when you watched them kiss... you just get horny at every little thing, don't you... like a bloody teenager... don't you dare go near anyone that makes you hard again, you hear me!?... oh, Merlin... I just want it to be me... I want all your fire, all your passion... and your cock, god, how I want your cock... you need to give it to me harder, baby... deeper... oh, yeah, there, right there, my love... _Christfuckmelove_... don't you dare stop now... You know how to drive me wild... How dare you stand next to Potter... looking so, so beautiful... you know how mad with jealousy and greedy I get... and I've been aching ever since... you need to show me it's only me... I need you to show me... oh, Ron, please... so close, my love..."

"It's only you," Ron whispered as his hips slammed unrelentingly into a blond beauty he's made an utter wreck of. "It's only ever you... can't you see what you do to me... You all but look at me... with that silver-serpent look in your eyes that fires me up... and I end up leaving everyone... everything behind to be with you... to show you that I'm yours... that it's only ever you... now... today... and every other day... I'd marry you again... and again... I'd go down on my knees and ask you... again... until I saw those sparkling liquid diamonds in your eyes and you breathing that trembling _"yes... god, yes"_ \- just the way you did the night I asked... my most cherished memory... Would you marry me again, Draco? _Will_ you marry me again, Draco Malfoy? It's been ten years... we could, my love... Say _"yes"_ , precious... please, say "yes"..." he whispered in a pleading, desperate voice of the man who was about to lose it, as the lithe, toned body underneath him, shimmering like virgin landscape in the candlelight, arched against him in its out-of-this-world beauty like a divine offering and Draco Malfoy roared his surrender and his deepest heart's desire: "Yes!!! Gods... fuck... yes... _yesyesyes_ , Ron... please... ohfuckingplease... my love... _yes_..."

Filled up to the brim, relaxed into oblivion and utterly exhausted the blond Slytherin could only mewl like a satisfied kitten when the muscled, heavy body of his husband collapsed over him and Ron hid his face into the crook of his neck, still not quite grounded in reality, mumbling something unintelligible that sounded like a cross between _"Merlin, Draco..." , "I'm getting old...", "bloody hell..."_ and _"the death of me"_ , but the silver-eyed man in his arms was too ecstatic and breathless to even care.

"We're getting married... again!" he whispered excitedly, as if only to himself. "Oh, I knew it's only a renewal of vows, but want it big this time... I'll let my mother plan it, I'll personally invite that Skeeter hag and put her in the first row so she can take all the pictures she wants... I want the fucking front-page news, I want the spot-light and I want this to be a public kick in the teeth of everyone that said we wouldn't last!"

"Slytherin... you terrible... incorrigible serpent..." Ron mumbled tiredly into his neck, but Draco could feel his smile.

"You told me once this was our beautiful dark love," he spoke into his silken fiery hair quietly. "Love from the shadows, that's how you called it. Cursed, even. Well... no more. I want no more shadows, Ron; you... that unruly, fiery head of yours... it lit up my entire life and chased all the shadows away long time ago... made me the happiest man alive... and now I want the whole bloody world to know! I want them all to hear when Ronald Billius Weasley says those unforgettable words of belonging to me; I want them all to be there when I tell you - and the world - that I love you and that I'm insanely proud to be your husband. No more hiding, Ron... no more shadows."

"Have it your way, precious," Ron murmured softly into his ear and from the tone of his voice Draco could guess that he was moved. The fiery head slowly moved from the crook of his neck and the smiling blue eyes, that once took his breath and his heart away, were upon him. "No more shadows," he whispered and kissed him sweetly, breathtakingly, and Draco in his elated, wildly beating heart, knew this was a promise. It was their time to step into the light.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As you know, this fic already has an end - but this is meant as a "thank you" for some of my most faithful readers, such as [OMGfanfiction](http://archiveofourown.org/users/OMGfanfiction), [oceandolfin](http://archiveofourown.org/users/oceandolfin) and shadowkissedlover (plus a few others) - because everyone needs someone to pick them up from time to time and this one might never have been completed without you, guys, so yeah - thanks again, I hope you enjoy it! :)  
> Oh - there's always one more thing, isn't there? Inspiration for Harry's Auror attire came from this pic - I'm sure everyone's seen it, but isn't it a splendid one? :D  
> http://41.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lz28efes6K1r85l50o1_500.jpg


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